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COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


AND 
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 


BOOKS AND BOOKLETS BY THE 
SAME AUTHOR 





Books 


THE WORLD’S GREAT RELIGIONS. (Semitic.) 
$2.00. 


THE DAWN OF CHRISTIANITY. (30 A.D. to 150 
A.D.) $2.00. 


FAITH IN A FUTURE LIFE. (Spiritualism, Theos- 
ophy, Psychical Research.) $2.00. 


THE MODERN IDEAL OF MARRIAGE. (A book 
for the young people.) $1.00. 


PSYCHIC TENDENCIES OF TODAY. (Sir Oliver 
Lodge, New Thought, Christian Science, etc.) $2.00, 


A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE OR WHAT HUMAN 
LIFE IS FOR. $1.00. 


THE FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS—Selections from 
the Bibles of the Great Religions. $1.25. 


CHRISTIAN SCIENCE—An Appreciation and Criii- 
cism. $1.00. 


Booklets 


THE COMMUNITY CHURCH AND THE ETHICAL 
MOVEMENT. 15c. 


DISTINCTIVE FEATURES OF THE ETHICAL 
MOVEMENT. 20c. 


THE SYMPHONY OF RELIGIONS. 25c. 


THE PROPHETS OF ISRAEL AND THEIR MES- 
SAGE FOR TODAY. 50c. 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


AND 
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 


/ BY 
ALFRED W. ‘MARTIN, A.M., S.T.B. 


AUTHOR OF “A PHILOSOPHY OF LIFE AND ITS SPIRITUAL 
VALUES,” “WORLD’S GREAT RELIGIONS AND THE 
RELIGION OF THE FUTURE,” ETO, 


bia 
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NaN OF PRI i \GE> a 








D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK :: 1926 :: LONDON 


COPYRIGHT, 1926, BY 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 


PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 


CHAPTER 


I. 


Il. 


XII. 


CONTENTS 


CHart SHowinc A SYNTHESIS OF 
HerIGiIons:. 2.) +. 


Intropuctrory. THr Evo.ution or 
POR ECLIAIPION? Perv Ure t Lele 
SourRcES OF THE REVELATIONS OF 

CoMPARATIVE RELIGION 
Tur RevELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE 
RELIGION : 


EXPposITION OF THE CHart—A Syn- 


THESIS OF RELIGIONS 

ReEsvuuts oF THE REVELATIONS 

An Orcanic FettowsuHir or Faitrus 

Unrry, Nort Unirormity Sy Pee 

Tue Bauat Movement anv Its 
Mission Ns 

Ernican RE1Licion AND THE RE tI- 
GION OF THE FUTURE 

Tue Histroricat RELIGIONS AND THE 
RELIGION OF THE FuTURE 

CHRISTIANITY AND THE RELIGION OF 
THE FuTURE Fee ey: 

Ture BisLtE AND THE RELIGION OF 
THE FuTURE Ho ABUL a 

BREE TOGTOAP ITY ft itct ito enue, Bok aie 


aan as 
Lea 





COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


AND 
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 


A SYNTHESIS OF RELIGIONS * 





Approxi- 
mate 
vee Date : . 
Religion Founder Whet ate Bible _ Deity 
Flour- 
ished 
Vedas, Agni, 
: : aoe Brahmanas, Indra, 
Hinduism...... Rishis 2000 B. c. Upanishads: ars 
etc. Brahma 
Ss J Buddhism..... Gautama | 5008.c. | Pitakas (?) 
Be 
< RL onic) eee VR: Petes ee" SAU SNe 0 ae Bs ee rr 
eine Zara- 600 zB. c. Ahura- 
Zoroastrianism. thochien (?) Avesta abicde 
§ Kung- The Five 
“ As Fu-tze “Kings” and| Tien; or 
: Confucianism. . (Confu- 500B.c. | he Four | Shan o-Ti 
& cius ) “Books” 
Judaism... ook. Moses (?) | 18008, c. |. Old Yahweh 
Testament 
3) Paul 
= AP LE 4 50 A. D. New 
= J Christianity.... and God 
5 resis 28 a. D. Testament 
w 
Mohammed- Moham- 625 «a. D Koran Allah 
ants ce. iit med 


* See pp. 32-47 for a detailed explanation of this chart. 


A SYNTHESIS OF RELIGIONS * 


“What Shall I Do to 


Hereafter Be Saved?” 


Reunion |Meditate on your one- 


with ness with Brahma 
Brahma “Thou art That” 
Walk the “eightfold 
Nirvana path’ that leads to 
Nirvana 
Be industrious, truth- 
Paradise ful; perform the 
Hell prescribed cere- 
monials 
Imitate Nature’s 
(?) calm unbroken 
order 
Fulfill the law of 
Snel righteousness 
The King- |“Put ye on the Lord 
dom of God Jesus Christ” 
Paradise |-Yield to Allah’s Will 


Dominant 
Note 


The Divine in 
universal 
nature 


Moral self- 
discipline 


Conflict with 
evil and ulti- 
mate victory 


Regulation of 
personal and 
social life 


Righteousness 


Faith—a mystic 


at-one-ment 
with 
Christ Jesus 


Submission 
(Islam) 


Adherents 


(approx- 
imately) 


200,000,000 


450,000,000 


100,000 


80,000,000 


15,000,000 


450,000,000 


250,000.000 


* See pp. 32-47 for a detailed explanation of this chart. 


“i 
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id) 





COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


AND 
THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 


CHAPTER I 


INTRODUCTORY—THE EVOLUTION OF 
APPRECIATION 


Three hundred and fifty years ago there 
was held at Agra, in India, the first parliament 
of religions. It was conceived, planned, and 
inaugurated by Akbar, the great Mogul em- 
peror of India. 

In 1575 he dedicated a magnificent structure 
called the Thadat Khana, or house of discus- 
sion, to the study of comparative religion. 
Here every Thursday evening he presided over 
an audience composed of representatives of 
the five great religions of India and their 
sects—Hinduism, Zoroastrianism, Moham- 
medanism, Judaism, Christianity. At each 
meeting a statement of the claims of one or 

1 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


another of these systems of faith was presented 
by an accredited delegate and his address was 
-followed by general discussion. Thus the 
tenets peculiar to each variety of religion were 
competently set forth and thereupon subjected 
to comment and criticism in an atmosphere of 
mutual respect and tolerance, generated by the 
genial and broad-minded Akbar. 

Out of this ferment of religious hospitality 
there was produced that remarkable book 
known as the Dabistan, an impartial report 
of the proceedings at these Thursday evening 
conferences. As an index of the catholicity 
and fraternalism that characterized the sessions 
let me quote a most noble sentence, spoken 
by one of the participants, a Mohammedan, 
of the Sufi sect: “If thou art a Mussulman, 
go stay with the Franks; if thou art a Shuite, 
go, mix with the Schismatics; if thou art a 
Christian, fellowship with the Jews. What- 
ever be thy religion, associate with those who 
think differently from thee. If thou canst 
mix with them freely and art not angered at 
hearing their discourse, thou hast attained 

2 


INTRODUCTORY 


peace and art a master of creation.” With 
this inspiring utterance let me couple the 
fervent exclamation of the Psalmist: “Be- 
hold how good and pleasant a thing it is for 
brethren to dwell together in unity.”* To- 
gether the two texts furnish a kind of spiritual 
setting in which to consider the subject before 
us. For, besides the intellectual purpose of 
acquainting us with the results of research 
in the field of comparative religion, these 
chapters have an ethical purpose for their main 
justification, namely, to make us more cath- 
olic in our sympathies, more just and gener- 
ous in our attitude to foreign faiths, more 
magnanimous toward orthodox people less for- 
tunate in their religion than we, more respon- 
sive to sources of inspiration that we were 
prone to neglect, more quick and keen to rec- 
ognize Oriental graces of character in which 
our Occidental civilization is deficient. Above 
all is it the ethical purpose of our inquiry to 
make us more proficient in the practice of ap- 
preciation, that modern virtue to which the 


1 Ps. 88:1. 
3 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


race, in its moral evolution, has been slowly 
climbing. How far we of the West are from 
this goal is evidenced by our reluctance to ad- 
mit any indebtedness to the Far East, by our 
glib talk about the life of humanity, the service 
of humanity, and so forth, while persisting in 
identifying all that is alive and forward- 
looking in humanity with our Western civil- 
ization, contrasting the “progressive West” 
with the “stagnant and immobile Kast” and 
complacently echoing the familiar line of 
Tennyson: 


Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle 
of Cathay. 


In the recently published Legacy of Rome 
four of the writers identified the Roman EKm- 
pire with “the whole civilized world.” Even 
Dean Inge, writing in the London Evening 
Standard, committed the same breach of 
broadmindedness and justice, implying that 
civilization ended abruptly in the fifth century 
on the western frontier of Parthia and that 
the arts, poetry, philosophy, and religion of 

if 


INTRODUCTORY 


China and India were the output of peoples 
emerging from barbarism! What contribu- 
tion, it is asked, in all seriousness, has the Far 
East made to human culture?) We admit a 
measure of merit in Chinese porcelains, Jap- 
anese color-prints and Indian textile fabrics; 
we admit that in such matters the Far East 
has something to teach the West. But toward 
the philosophy, religion, and ethics of Oriental 
peoples the prevailing Occidental attitude is 
one of contemptuous indifference or of hostile 
criticism. Such are some of the indices of our 
stage in the moral evolution of the race toward 
the ideal of appreciation. 

Time was, when, in Christian countries, per- 
secution was thought to be ethically war- 
ranted, when those in ecclesiastical authority, 
assuming that they alone had the only true 
religion, believed themselves divinely ordained 
to suppress dissenters and so vindicate and 
spread “God’s truth.” If persuasion failed, 
they resorted to imprisonment; when that 
proved ineffectual, they tried the lash. As a 
final measure they condemned dissenters to 

5 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


the stake, hoping by fire to exterminate both 
heresy and heretics. How often, oh, how 
often, have ecclesiastical despots sought to 
crush free thought and free speech by burning 
the books and the bodies of authors whose 
convictions were brighter than flames and like 
asbestos withstood the fire intended to con- 
sume them! ‘True, the traces of such forms 
of persecution are entirely extinct, but the 
spirit of it still survives, though the forms 
have taken on a milder mien. ‘To-day the 
Christian persecutes the Jew and the Jew the 
Christian; Romanism persecutes Protestant- 
ism, orthodox Protestantism persecutes liberal 
Christianity; and even liberal Christianity has 
been found persecuting the religion that can- 
not call itself Christian. 

A step upward in the direction of the mod- 
ern ideal was taken when forbearance replaced 
persecution, when latitude was admitted in 
theology no less than in geography and the 
distinction drawn between essentials and non- 
essentials in religion; when dissenters were re- 
luctantly allowed to hold their heresies with- 

6 


INTRODUCTORY 


out fear of molestation or threat. And when 
at length, tolerance was substituted for for- 
bearance, it meant that a new attitude was 
taken toward dissenters, because tolerance is 
the willing consent to let others hold opinions 
different from our own, while forbearance is 
the wnwilling consent. Yet even this attitude, 
noble as it is, cannot be regarded as the acme 
of spiritual attainment. For, tolerance al- 
ways implies a measure of concession. We 
tolerate what we cannot help but would sup- 
press if we could. Tolerance has an air of 
patronizing condescension about it. He who 
tolerates affects a certain offensive superiority, 
exhibits spiritual conceit. Clearly, then, it 
cannot be true that tolerance marks the acme 
of spiritual attainment, or that it is “the loveli- 
est flower on the rose-bush of liberalism,” 
to quote a distinguished Unitarian divine of 
the last century. lLovelier far is apprecia- 
tion, which, while wholly free from the blem- 
ish that mars the beauty of tolerance, adds to 
that beauty fresh graces all its own. Appreci- 
ation is dissatisfied with tolerance, despises 
7 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


mere forbearance, blushes at persecution. It 
restrains us from ridiculing beliefs that to us 
are superstitions and from looking upon our 
own cherished beliefs as final; rather does ap- 
preciation bid us realize our own finitude and 
the immense firmament of thought under 
which we move, watchful for each new star 
the guiding heavens may reveal. Toward 
every established system of belief appreciation 
takes the evolutionary point of view, judging 
it not only statically, by what it was at the 
start, but also dynamically, by what it has be- 
come in the course of the centuries. Toward 
the Bibles of the great religions, appreciation 
takes an eclectic attitude, seeking from each 
what can be borrowed for the enriching and 
deepening of the moral life. Toward the 
founders of these religions, appreciation takes 
a reverential, docile attitude. Before each of 
them it bows, be he the Buddha, Zoroaster, 
Confucius, Mohammed, Moses, or Jesus; not 
indeed that all are to be equally estimated, but 
each is to be evaluated according to the truth 
he had to teach and the inspiration that may 
8 


INTRODUCTORY 


be derived from the story of his life and work. 
Toward the great religions themselves appre- 
ciation takes the organic viewpoint. It con- 
ceives of each religion as a member of a family 
of religions, a part of a whole, an organ of an 
organism, each having some excellence not 
possessed by the rest and therefore to be con- 
tributed by it to them, and receiving in return 
the manifold contributions of all the others 
toward its own enhancement. In the eyes of 
appreciation all the great religions and their 
sects are likened to the stops and pedals of 
a great organ, some emphasizing the essential, 
others the ornamental notes, none of itself 
yielding the full-orbed music, but the harmoni- 
ous blending of their individual melodies pro- 
ducing the great symphony of human aspira- 
tion and faith. 


CHAPTER II 


SOURCES OF THE REVELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE 
RELIGION 


The supreme ethical value of the revela- 
tions of comparative religion is that they serve 
to cultivate in us this virtue of appreciation. 
But before we note the manner in which this 
spiritual gain is vouchsafed to us, we must 
turn to the revelations themselves. What are 
they and whence do they derive? Beginning 
with the latter question, we owe these revela- 
tions directly to the discovery of the Bibles 
of the great religions. Spaniards discovered 
the Koran. When, in 711, the Moors crossed 
from northern Africa into Spain, they brought 
with them a book for which they made 
the most astounding claim. They held that 
if every existing copy of this book were to be 
destroyed the world would not be the poorer, 
because an original, everlasting copy is pre- 

10 


SOURCES OF THE REVELATIONS 


served by the throne of Allah and, by means 
of relays of angels, it could be recommuni- 
cated in full to mankind. This “word of 
God,” as the Mohammedans called it, was the 
Koran, the sacred book of their religion. 

Germans were the discoverers of the Con- 
fucian scriptures, some of them edited by 
the Sage himself and others the work of his 
own moral genius and that of successors. 
About the middle of the fourteenth century, 
certain German travelers found their way to 
a rich and densely populated country they 
called Cathay, but later learned to designate 
as China. Here they discovered a wealth of 
religious and moral literature, the five “Kings” 
and the four “Books,” conspicuous for their 
teaching on business and domestic ethics. To- 
gether these works constitute the Bible of 
_ Confucianism and, like the Koran, they have 
been translated into all the leading languages 
of Europe. 

It was a Frenchman, Anquetil du Perron, 
who, while browsing in the imperial library at 
Paris, in 1784, came upon a collection of dusty 

11 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


sheets of manuscript, written in a Sanskrit 
dialect. ‘These proved to be a portion of the 
Zoroastrian Bible, the Avesta. Wishing to 
know more of this literature and of these 
people, Anquetil went to Bombay, in north- 
western India, where, for over a thousand 
years, a colony of Zoroastrian exiles from 
Persia had established themselves. Anquetil 
spent three years among them, learning their 
language, and chancing upon one hundred and 
eighty-two manuscripts, similar to the sheets 
he had discovered in the Paris library, the 
grand _ total, composing all that we have of 
the sacred books of the Parsees, or Zoro- 
astrians. 

When, in 1787, the British took possession 
of India, that great commercial enterprise led 
to the discovery of the oldest part of what is 
probably the oldest Bible in the world, the 
Rig-Veda, consisting of some 1,017 hymns in 
praise of the personified forces of Nature. 
Add to the Rig-Veda the other three Vedas, 
the Yajur, Sama, and Atharva, subsequently 
discovered; the Aranyakas, or ‘Forest Medi- 

12 


SOURCES OF THE REVELATIONS 


tations,” the Upanishads and the two great 
epics of the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, 
and we have a compendium of sacred Hindu 
literature over four times as large as the Old 
and New ‘Testaments. Later, still other 
Indian books were discovered, which proved to 
be the sacred literature of the Buddhists—the 
Pitakas. The very letters of these books were 
regarded as having a sanctity of their own, so 
they were counted, just as the letters of the 
New ‘Testament were counted in the days 
when men thought that not only its teaching, 
but also its letters were “inspired.”’ Compar- 
ing the total number of letters inthe Pitakas 
with those in the New Testament we find that 
there are eight times as many in the former as 
there are in the latter. Such, in brief, are the 
sources whence the revelations of comparative 
religion derive. 


CHAPTER III 
THE REVELATIONS OF COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


Given these discovered Bibles of Moham- 
medanism, Confucianism, Zoroastrianism, 
Hinduism, Buddhism, the material was at 
hand for a comparative study of them and 
the Hebrew and Christian Scriptures. What 
has that study disclosed? What are the reve- 
lations of comparative religion as made mani- 
fest in the sacred books of the seven extant 
great religions? Incidentally it may be noted 
that the religion of ancient Egypt disap- 
peared with the civilization that cherished it. 
The Assyrian and Babylonian religions passed 
away in lke manner, though not without con- . 
tributing important elements to Judaism and 
through Judaism to Christianity. ‘The religion 
of ancient Greece gave place to that of Rome 
and the religion of Rome was forthwith sup- 
planted by Christianity, the latter judiciously 

14 


THE REVELATIONS 


borrowing (in its proselytizing work) rites 
and ceremonies that have survived in modified 
forms in our Christmas and Easter festivals. 

1. First among the revelations of compara- 
tive religion of which we must take notice is 
the universality of such moral sentiments and 
precepts as truthfulness, temperance, justice, 
kindliness, patience, love, etc. Far from be- 
ing the exclusive characteristic of any one re- 
ligion these moral ideas and ideals are incul- 
cated in the Bibles of all religions. ‘Take, 
for example, the moral sentiment of catho- 
licity or broadmindedness, a generous hos- 
pitable attitude toward religions different 
from one’s own. 

In the Hindu Bible we read: “Altar flowers 
are of many species, but all worship is one. 
Systems of faith differ, but God is One. The 
object of all religions is alike; all seek the 
object of their love, and all the world is love’s 
dwelling place.” 

The corresponding passage from the Bud- 
dhist Bible reads: “The root of religion is to 
reverence one’s own faith and never to revile 

15 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


the faith of others. My doctrine makes no dis- 
tinction between high and low, rich and poor. 
It is like the sky; it has room for all, and 
like water it washes all alike.” 

And these noble sentences have their equiv- 
alent in the Zoroastrian Bible: “Have the re- 
ligions of mankind no common ground? Is 
there not everywhere the same enrapturing 
beauty? Broad indeed is the carpet which 
God has spread, and many are the colors which 
He has given it. Whatever road I take joins 
the highway that leads to the Divine.”’ 

The selfsame sentiment appears in the Con- 
fucian scriptures: “Religions are many and 
different, but reason is one. Humanity is the 
heart of man, and justice is the path of man. 
The broad-minded see the truth in different 
religions; the narrow-minded see only the dif- 
ferences.”’ 

In the Jewish scriptures we read: “Wisdom 
in all ages entering into holy souls maketh 
them friends of God and Prophets.” “Are 
we not all children of one Father? Hath not 
one God created us?” 

16 


THE REVELATIONS 


Finally, in the Christian scriptures it is 
written: “God is no respecter of persons, but 
in every nation he that revereth Him and 
worketh righteousness is accepted of Him.” 
“He hath made of one blood all the nations 
of the earth.” 

2. Second among the revelations of com- 
parative religion is the universality of such © 
spiritual sentiments as reverence, awe, wonder, 
aspiration, worship—these, too, far from being 
the peculiar possession of any one religion are 
common to all. Take, for illustration, the re- 
ligious sentiment of trust in its relation to 
man’s survival of death—the trust that we hu- 
mans are “not dust merely, that returns to 
dust,” that besides our empirical self there 
exists also a spiritual self which therefore per- 
sists when the psycho-physical self vanishes; 
the trust that eternality is the mark of our 
essential selfhood, the “numen”’ in every child 
of man. 

Beginning again with the Hindu scriptures, 
we read: “Give to the plants and to the waters 
thy body which belongs to them; but there 

17 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


is an immortal portion of thee, transport it 
to the world of the holy.” 

In the Zoroastrian Avesta we find these 
sentences: “On the last day questions will be 
asked only as to what you have done, not from 
whom you are descended. I fear not death; 
I fear only not having lived well enough.” ~ 

From the Pitakas of the Buddhists we cull: 
“The soul is myself; the body is only my dwell- 
ing’ place.” 

The Confucian Bible declares: “Man never 
dies. It is because men see only their bodies 
that they hate death.” 

In the Mohammedan scripture we find this 
passage: “Mortals ask “What property has 
a man left behind him?” but angels ask ‘What 
good deeds has he sent on before him? ” 

In the Jewish Apocrypha we read: “The 
memorial of virtue is immortal. When it is 
present men take example of it, and when it 
is gone they desire it.” 

Finally, the Christian scriptures contain the 
familiar words: “Though our outward man 

18 


THE REVELATIONS 


perish, yet is our inward man day by day re- 
newed.”’ 

38. A third revelation of comparative re- 
ligion relates to the Ten Commandments of 
the Old Testament. What do we find? In 
_ the first place we find that the ethical con- 
tent of the Decalogue (which excludes only 
three of the commandments) is wanting in 
none of the other six Bibles. Secondly, we 
find that the familiar Decalogue might well 
be supplemented by four commandments con- 
tributed by unfamiliar Bibles. The Koran 
contains a commandment concerning cleanli- 
ness and another on humaneness, or kindness 
to animals. The Hindu Upanishads and the 
Confucian Analects unite in enjoining the 
practice of intellectual honesty—still one of 
the crying needs of the religious world where 
the temptation is so great to juggle with 
words, to reinterpret ancient phrases in un- 
ethical ways, to sell one’s intellectual birth- 
right for the pottage of social position or 
business success. The fifth of the ten com- 
mandments in the Buddhist Pitakas reads: 

19 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


“Thou shalt drink no intoxicating drink,” an 
injunction paralleled in the Mohammedan 
Koran but missing in the Christian code—a 
serious defect in the estimation of Buddhists 
and Mohammedans, no less than of the millions 
of Christian prohibitionists. 

4, More impressive, however, than any of 
the revelations of which we have thus far taken 
account is the universality of the Golden Rule, 
supposed, by those whose Bible reading has 
been restricted to the Old and New Testa- 
ments, to have originated with Jesus, but, in 
truth, antedating him by centuries and already 
very ancient in the time of Confucius. Each 
of the seven Bibles of the extant great re- 
ligions contains a version of the Golden Rule, 
which, strictly speaking, is not a rule at all, 
because it does not tell us what to do; it only 
sets forth the spirit that should be back of our 
conduct, leaving it to us to find the appropri- 
ate deed. Here are the seven differing forms 
in which the Golden Rule has been given ex- 
pression in the world’s great faiths: 

The Hindu: “The true rule of life is to 

20 


THE REVELATIONS 


guard and do by the things of others as they 
do by their own.” 

The Buddhist: “One should seek for others 
the happiness one desires for oneself.” 

The Zoroastrian: “Do as you would be done 
by. 

The Chinese: “What you do not wish done 
to yourself, do not unto others.” 


99 


The Mohammedan: “Let none of you treat 
your brother in a way he himself would dislike 
to be treated.” 

The Jewish: “Whatever you do not wish 
your neighbor to do to you, do not unto him.” 

The Christian: “All things whatsoever ye 
would that men should do unto you, do ye 
even so to them.” 

5. Comparative religion has given us for a 
fifth revelation, the likeness of religion to a 
tree which began as a seed and gradually 
became differentiated into branches, twigs, 
leaves, yet all the while retaining its unity by 
reason of the sap that flows through every part 
of the total organism. So religion began as a 
seed of thought concerning man’s relation to. 

21 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


the universe or to the Power or Powers which 
he thought of as governing it. ‘This seed- 
thought promptly generated feeling and con- 
duct—the other two constituent elements of 
religion. Gradually religion became differen- 
tiated into religions, sects, subsects, yet all the 
while retaining a unity because of the common 
spirit of reverence, aspiration, worship that 
flows through every part of the total religious 
organism. Hence it happens that differences 
of climate, of environment, of education, of 
racial origin have given differing forms of ex- 
pression to one and the same spiritual senti- 
ment. Whether, then, it be the Aztec bowing 
before his shapeless block, or the New Zea- 
lander squatting before his feathered god, or 
the Moslem prostrate in front of his mosque, 
or the Christian kneeling in prayer to his 
Heavenly Father, or the cosmic theist com- 
muning with “the Infinite and Eternal Knergy 
whence all things proceed,” or the founder of 
the Ethical Movement meditating on “the 
Ethical Manifold,” conscious of himself as “‘an 
infinitesimal part of the Infinite God, the 
22 | 


THE REVELATIONS 


Spiritual Commonwealth”—in each case it is 
the yearning for a higher and purer type of 
personal life that has been expressed. Hence, 
too, it happens that Christian institutions like 
the clergy and the church have their parallels 
in religions which originated centuries before 
Christianity. And, again, forms like baptism, 
the Lord’s Supper, the Mass, all have their 
prototypes in religious systems antedating the 
Christian, because of this universality of spirit- 
ual sentiments which the study of comparative 
religion reveals. 

Listen to the Hindu chanting his prayer to 
Varuna, the god of conduct; how it calls to 
mind one of the Old Testament psalms, or 
perchance one of the Babylonian collection of 
“penitential psalms,” or, perhaps, the familiar 
refrain of the Episcopalian Litany, “Have 
_mercy, O Lord, upon us and incline our hearts 
to keep Thy law.” 

“O Varuna, thou bright and shining god, 
to thee I turn. I have strayed from the path 
of righteousness: have mercy, Almighty, have 
mercy. It was wine, it was dice, it was temp- 

23 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


tation: have mercy, Almighty, have mercy. 
Save us, O Varuna, from the sins inherited 
from our fathers and save us also from the sins 
we ourselves commit: have mercy, Almighty, 
have mercy. O Varuna, thou great and power- 
ful god, keep me from erring in the way of 
the wicked ; remember the weakness of my will; 
I yield myself to thy pity and thy help: have 
mercy, Almighty, have mercy.” 

Hear the Parsee’s prayer for purity and 
how slight a change in its vocabulary would be | 
needed to make it suit the spiritual need of 
even the most radical of thinkers. Six cen- 
turies before our era, perhaps earlier still, this 
prayer was breathed from Zoroastrian lips: 

“With venerating desire for the gift of 
purity I pray for the blessing of the bountiful 
spirit of Ahura-Mazda. Teach me to know 
thy laws that I may walk by the help of thy 
pure spirit, for he who knows purity knows 
Ahura-Mazda. To such an one thou art 
father, brother, friend. May my actions 
toward all men be performed in harmony with 
the divine Righteousness and may I possess 

24 


THE REVELATIONS 


those attributes which are at one with Thy 
good mind. May the needed spiritual help be 
bestowed, not for a time only, but for 
eternity.” 

Read the second of the Buddhist Pitakas, 
the Dhamma, or Path, and though you may 
not believe in reincarnation, nor in Nirvana— 
the two cardinal doctrines of Gotama’s faith— 
yet in the “noble eightfold path” you find the 
credentials of a religion that speaks to you in 
accents clear, strong, beautiful, persuasive, and 
at times sublime. 

6. In the light of the five revelations of com- 
parative religion thus far considered we readily 
recognize a sixth, namely, the utter impro- 
priety of perpetuating the old-time classifica- 
tion of religions into “true and false,” “re- 
vealed and natural,” “divine and human,” 
“Christian and Pagan.” Even the most biased 
of orthodox believers who yet has patience to 
peruse the ethical and religious portions of the 
five Bibles—not so familiar as the remaining 
two—will admit that such a classification has 
been rendered obsolete and unwarranted by the 

25 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


revelations of comparative religion. They 
have given rise to modes of classification that 
presuppose no such invidious distinctions as 
were born of ignorance and prejudice, but 
frankly recognizing the elements of truth, 
beauty, and inspiration present in all seven of 
the great religions, they have been grouped 
according to racial and linguistic relationships. 
So considered the seven are classified under 
three distinct heads. Hinduism, Buddhism, 
and Zoroastrianism constitute the Aryan, 
group. Buddhism arose as a protest against 
certain features of Hinduism as it was in the 
sixth century before our era, while Zoroastri- 
anism was undifferentiated from Hinduism in 
the period prior to the great migrations. In- 
deed, the linguistic relationship of these two 
systems of faith gives proof of their original 
oneness. By a simple system of phoneti¢ 
changes the names of Hindu deities can be 
transformed into their Zoroastrian equivalents. 
Belonging to the Semitic group are Judaism, 
Christianity, and Mohammedanism. Here, 
too, linguistic as well as theological and ethical 
26 


THE REVELATIONS 


ties give ground for the grouping of these 
three under one head. 

Confucianism, standing in no racial or lin- 
guistic relationship to either of the other 
groups, is separately classified under the head 
of Turanian, a generic title intended to em- 
brace all religions that are neither Aryan nor 
Semitic. In passing, it may be remarked that 
all attempts at a chronological classification 
of the great religions have hitherto failed. For, 
while it is obvious that Christianity is younger 
than Judaism and Mohammedanism than 
Christianity, and that Buddhism was born 
after Hinduism had been extant for a millen- 
nium or more, the question of antiquity re- 
mains unsolved for Hinduism, Zoroastrian- 
ism, and the religion of China. ‘There are 
those who claim that the last mentioned is the 
oldest. Others hold that the palm of ancient- 
ness must be awarded to India and still others 
who would bequeath it to Persia. Thus, a 
generally satisfying chronological classifica- 
tion of the religions of the world is rendered 
impossible. 

27 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


7. 'To every unbiased student of compara- 
tive religion it must be apparent that not 
Christianity alone but all religions face the 
same way, that is, toward an ideal of life. 
All hold before their adherents a mental pic- 
ture of what it is supremely desirable to be, 
and this common possession and presentation 
of an ideal of personal life may be set down as 
a seventh revelation of comparative religion. 
In the old royal forest of Fontainebleau the 
paths are so laid out as to converge in a large 
open space called a star. People may be walk- 
ing in many different directions, they may 
come from various parts of the forest, but from 
whatever quarter they come they all meet at 
last at the central star. In the forest of re- 
ligion the passion for the perfect is such a 
star. Many and varied are the paths which 
the great religions have laid out but they all 
converge at that central spot of spiritual sun- 
shine—the passion for the perfect. All re- 
ligions then are one because of this common 
hunger for the realization of an ideal of life. 

8. Turn we now to an eighth in the suc- 

28 


THE REVELATIONS 


cession of revelations engaging our attention. 
Christianity has been repeatedly defined as the 
religion that teaches the brotherhood of man. 
But comparative religion reveals the fact that 
all the great religions inculcate this doctrine. 
Permit me just here to express the hope that 
no reader will misunderstand my references to 
Christianity as compared with other religions. 
If any words of mine on this point be con- 
strued as manifesting a hostile or unkindly 
spirit, they will be misconstrued and it will be 
in regretted contradiction of my purpose if 
I let fall a single careless word that shall 
wound the reverence of even the most sensi- 
tive of my readers. Since all the religions of 
mankind teach the doctrine of human brother- 
hood it follows that no one of them can be 
defined in terms of that doctrine. All the way 
from the founder of Hinduism to Abdul Baha, 
the Bahai prophet, the brotherhood of man has 
been an integral part of religious teaching. 
But comparative religion calls us to note the 
further and more important fact, namely, that, 
while all religions teach this inspiring doctrine, 
29 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


the basis upon which they set it forth differs 
in each case. For instance, Buddhism based 
the doctrine on the belief that all men are 
enmeshed in the same net of suffering and 
all are subject to the law of Karma and rein- 
carnation. | 
Zoroastrianism taught that all men are 
brothers because all have been summoned to 
soldiery in a great cosmic warfare under a di- 
vine commander-general, Ahura-Mazda, to 
win an age-long battle against the enemy, 
Angro-Mainyus and his demons. 
Confucianism based its doctrine of brother- 
hood on the consciousness of a common task 
devolving upon all mankind—to master and 
practice the precepts of the Sage. Christianity 
based its teaching of brotherhood on belief 
in the Fatherhood of God and the need of all 
men for salvation through Jesus Christ. The 
Ethical Movement, it may be said in passing, 
also teaches human brotherhood, but on the 
ground that every human being has worth, 
that is, value on his own account, regardless 
of the value he may have as a means to others’ 
30 


THE REVELATIONS 


ends; in other words, on the ground that there 
is a moral nature in all men with latent po- 
tentialities in each for approximating perfec- 
tion. Consequently, it will not do to define 
Christianity as “the religion that teaches the 
brotherhood of man” because that definition is 
loose, inaccurate; it does not define, but 
touches only on that which is common to all 
religions. 

9. Once more, comparative religion shows 
us that while all the great religious systems 
deal with the same fundamental issues—God, 
immortality, duty, salvation—the mode of 
dealing with these is in no two instances the 
same. All alike raise the root-questions of 
religion— What is the chief end of man? 
What shall I do to be saved ?—but the answers 
differ in every case. To borrow a simile of 
the German dramatist, Herder, the religions 
are like the strings of a harp, each of which 
has its own distinctive note. It is this ninth of 
the revelations of comparative religion that I 
have sought to visualize by means of the chart 
which forms the frontispiece of this book. 

31 


CHAPTER IV 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART—A SYNTHESIS OF 
RELIGIONS 


Turning to this chart it will be seen that in 
the column on the extreme left the seven 
extant great religions are listed according to 
the racial and linguistic bases of classification 
referred to on page 26. The second column 
includes the names of the founders of these 
religions, so far as known. In the case of 
Hinduism, which harks back to Vedism, or the 
religion of the Vedas, as its earliest form, we 
know not the name of the founder. We know 
only that this religion originated with the 
hymns composed by the “Rishis”’ or poet- 
priests, in part preserved for us in the Rig- 
Veda. The founder of Buddhism is commonly 
known by his family name, Gautama, but in 
the Pitakas he is called “Bhagavat,” the 

32 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 
Blessed One; “Siddhartha,” like his prede- 


cessors; “Tathagata,” one in whom wishes are 
fulfilled; ““Cakya-Muni,” monk of the Cakya 
tribe. ‘“Zarathushtra” is the proper substitute 
for the popular but incorrect “Zoroaster” 
while Confucius is the Latinized form of 
Kung-Fu-Tze, the master Kung. 

It may be that Abraham should have been 
set down as the founder of Israel’s religion, 
rather than Moses, but the Genesis record of 
the patriarch’s life is so wrapped in legendary 
lore as to forbid our ascribing to him any 
other function of leadership than that of head- 
ing the caravan from Ur in Chaldea and lay- 
ing the foundations of a new nation in the 
West. As for the later stages in the develop- 
ment of the religion of Israel, we are not un- 
mindful of the part played by the prophets 
and by Ezra—yet of all the names identified 
with the beginnings of this religion, that of 
Moses would seem to be the most warranted. 
From the New Testament book of the Acts 
and from the Epistles it is plain that the im- _ 
mediate founder of Christianity was the 

33 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


apostle Paul. Yet it is equally plain that with- 
out Jesus there could not have been an apostle 
Paul. Moreover, all the while that he was 
engaged in missionary work, forces of a moral 
and spiritual nature were operative that ema- 
nated not from Paul but from Jesus. Hence 
Paul and Jesus must be regarded as joint 
founders of Christianity.’ 

With regard to the dates when these Found- 
ers were at the zenith of their influence it 
should be noted that in the case of the Rishis 
who wrote the Rig-Veda their compositions 
are at least as old as 2000 B. c. | 

Gautama was born in 550 B.c., and from 
the Pitakas we learn that he was about fifty 
years old when his success as a religious re- 
former was fully assured. 

Professor A. V. Williams Jackson, the fore- 
most living American authority on Zoroastri- 
anism, favors 600 B.c. as the approximate date 
for Zarathushtra’s efflorescence, though the 
date of his birth has been set by other scholars 


1 For a fuller discussion of this point see the author’s 
Dawn of Christianity, Chap. III. 


34 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


as far back at 1000 B.c. and as far forward as 
300 B.c. 

Confucius, it will be observed, was a contem- 
porary of the Buddha, even as was Heraclitus 
in Greece and Nehemiah in Palestine. 

If the date of the Exodus of the Israelites 
from Egypt was 1320 B.c., as the late Pro- 
fessor Toy and other authorities incline to be- 
lieve, we are warranted in fixing 1300 B.c. as 
the time at which Moses reached the zenith of 
his power. 

The apostle Paul outlived Jesus some thirty 
years and 4 B.c. is now generally regarded as 
the year in which Jesus was born. 

The Mohammedan Hegira, 622 a.p.—the 
flight of the Prophet from Mecca to Medina 
—marked the beginning of the Islamic cal- 
endar and three years later he was at the apex 
of his reformatory career. 

The fourth column presents the names of 
the various sacred books or Bibles of the great 
religions. 

In every instance, excepting only the 
Pitakas of Buddhism and the Koran of Mo- 

35 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


hammedanism, these Bibles represent a growth 
covering centuries. Only the chief constituent 
parts of the Hindu Bible are here given, the 
sacred literature in its entirety being the work 
of twenty centuries or more. The Pitakas 
(baskets) of Buddhism are (1) the Vinaya, 
containing the rules for the monastic order; 
(2) the Dhamma, or ethical teachings of the 
Master; (3) the Abhiddamma, or metaphysi- 
cal basis on which the ethical system is built. 
The Avesta, too, has its divisions metaphysical, 
ethical, ceremonial. Four of the five “Kings” 
(Web) of the Confucian sacred literature 
antedate the founder by centuries; the four 
“Books,” the Analects, or Table-Talk of 
Confucius, the Doctrine of the Mean, the 
Great Learning, and Mencius date from the 
death of the Sage. Fifteen distinct types of 
literature are included in the Bible of Judaism 
and its evolution covered nearly fifteen cen- 
turies. The fourfold division of the New 
Testament is familiar and need not detain us. 
From its earliest book, the Epistle of Paul to 
the Galatians, to its latest, the Second Epistle 
36 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


of Peter, a century and a half is covered. Of 
the Koran it should be said that the principles 
and methods of the higher criticism have al- 
ready been applied to it, enabling us to read 
in chronological sequence its 114 suras and 
thus to trace the development of Mohammed’s 
life and work. 

What the seven great religions have to say 
regarding theism as summed up in the names 
of the deities is indicated in the fifth column 
of the chart. 

Only opposite Buddhism has it been neces- 
sary to insert an interrogation mark, for while 
the Buddha believed in the Hindu pantheon, 
he thought its gods were, like human beings, 
subject to the law of Karma. Above these 
was a supreme place, but this Gautama left 
vacant because for him there was no Over- 
Soul, no permanent ultimate source of all that 
is, only “a continuous flux.’ In this sense 
the Buddha was an atheist. 

Zoroastrianism holds that coeval with Ahu- 
ra-Mazda, though not coeternal with him, 
is Angro-Mainyus. Eventually the former, 

37 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


the Good Principle, will triumph over the lat- 
ter, the Evil Principle. Hence, while tem- 
porarily dualistic, Zoroastrianism is essentially 
monotheistic, anticipating the ultimate reign of 
Ahura-Mazda alone. 

Confucius preferred the impersonal term 
“Tien,” meaning “Heaven,” to the personal, 
anthropomorphic ‘“Shang-Ti,’ “Heavenly 
Lord,” a preference quite in keeping with his 
agnostic attitude to supramundane matters. 

The Hebrew “Yahweh,” formerly mis- 
named “Jehovah,” represents a theistic con- 
ception that underwent a prolonged evolution- 
ary process, the stages of which can be clearly 
traced in the Old Testament books when 
chronologically arranged. 

Christianity adopted the generic name 
“God,” which the postexilian Jews had substi- 
tuted for the provincial name “Yahweh.” 
When the postexilian prophets had reached 
the conviction that Yahweh was God of all the 
world and not of Israel alone, they renounced 
the restricting appellation “Yahweh” and 

38 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


adopted the universal term “Elohim” 
(“God”). 

Passing to the column that epitomizes the 
different conceptions of life after death we 
note the reappearance of an interrogation 
mark, but this time opposite Confucianism. 
For here it was that the agnosticism of the 
founder took on its most explicit manifesta- 
tion. Again and again in the Confucian 
scriptures he is represented as confronted by 
disciples with questions concerning death and 
what comes after death. Invariably he made 
answer by pointing to the unfulfilled duties of 
the present life: “While you do not know life 
how can you know about death or the here- 
after?” 

Opposite Hinduism we read “reunion with 
Brahma.” But this belief was reached only 
late in the development of this religion. The 
primitive Vedism taught a doctrine of heaven 
and hell and only after many centuries did a 
Hindu, speculating on the possibility of dying 
a second time in Heaven, arrive at the theory 
of successive reincarnations with ultimate re- 

39 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


union of the individual atman (soul) with the 
universal Atman, Brahma, whence all souls 
originally came. 

Buddhism held out to its devoteés the hope 
of reaching Nirvana, but it was never defined 
by the Buddha in positive terms. Whenever 
in his sermons or elsewhere, Gautama referred 
to Nirvana it was always as that blessed state 
in which reincarnation has forever ceased. Of 
the state itself he preferred not to speak; it 
was beyond human ken. 

The Zoroastrian Avesta furnishes us a 
graphic account of “the four Paradises” and 
“the four Hells” in the twenty-second Yast. 

Of the Hebrew conception of the hereafter 
as found in the Old Testament we have to say 
that, in the main, it does not rise above the 
belief in Sheol, the underworld to which the 
good and bad alike departed after death. 
Only in a few isolated passages do we find a 
gleam of hope that something other than the 
colorless shadowy existence of Sheol awaits 
the children of men. Not till the second cen- 
tury before our era and in the Apocryphal 

40 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


Wisdom of Solomon do we meet with the 
first explicit statement of a doctrine of per- 
sonal immortality—conscious, active, joyous 
life beyond the grave.’ 

Every careful reader of the New Testament 
will have observed the oneness of Jesus and 
Paul in their anticipation of a new order of 
society, a Kingdom of Heaven on earth, to be 
miraculously established by divine agency.* 

In no other religion do the ideas of heaven 
and hell take on more realistic and fantastic 
forms than in the Mohammedan. And yet the 
Koran makes it clear that there are spiritual 
as well as physical delights to be anticipated 
by those who “do the will of Allah.” 

Conditional upon the attainment of post- 
mortem felicity is the practice of a prescribed 
order of thought and action. Conceiving sal- 
vation as synonymous with such future well- 
being these religions have their respective an- 
swers to the question, What shall I do to be 
saved? Hinduism, in its most highly devel- 
oped form, bids the believer meditate upon the 


2Wisd. of Sol. 1:23-2:4. 
3 Matt. 13, passim; Eph. 4, passim. 


Al 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


relation of the individual atman to the World- 
Atman. Let each come to a realization of his 
oneness with the soul of the universe and 
when, at last, he reaches the point where that 
sense of oneness is complete and absolute, he 
is saved; that is, rebirth into the human ter- 
restrial world for him has ceased. When a 
mortal has recognized Brahma, feeling, “He is 
myself,” all further desire to cling to terres- 
trial life has ceased. The culminating thought 
of both Veda and Upanishads is summarized 
in the solemn expression tat tvam asi, “Thou 
are That.” In other words, the essence of man 
is itself Brahma. When once the wise man 
has seen That (tad apacyat) he becomes That 
(tad abhavat) because in truth he always was 
and is That (tad asit). Hence the final at- 
tainment of man is this knowledge, this realiza- 
tion; it is the “works” of the Jew, and the 
“faith” of the Christian; salvation by the com- 
plete ascendancy of the divine in one’s self. 
Buddhism, beginning with “the four noble 
truths” about suffering (the fact of suffer- 
ing, its cause, its cure, the way to its cure), 
42 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


finds the way out to be an ethical self-disci- 
pline called “the eightfold path’ (explained 
in full detail in the great sermons of the 
Buddha). Whosoever takes that “path” ar- 
rives at salvation from rebirth—Nirvana. For 
Buddhism, like Hinduism, has ever looked on 
reincarnation as something to be escaped more 
than aught else. 

To be saved, according to Zoroastrianism, 
means to share with Ahura-Mazda the ultimate 
victory over Angro-Mainyus in the cosmic 
battle of Right against Wrong, a battle in 
which every human being is called to be a sol- 
dier on the side of the sovereign Lord. 

Confucianism, agnostic on the subject of 
the hereafter, not denying its reality, but 
simply confessing utter ignorance of what 
comes after death, preferred to confine its at- 
tention to this world, to salvation from its dis- 
cords and disorders, a goal to be attained by 
reproduction in all personal and social rela- 
tions of the calm, unbroken order of the solar 
system. 

The religion of the Old Testament, with its 

43 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


sad, somber outlook toward Sheol, conceived 
salvation in terms of at-one-ment with God 
here on earth and made fulfillment of the “law 
of righteousness” the condition of that one- 
ness. 

Christianity as presented by the apostle 
Paul made salvation—from “the wrath to 
come’’—consist in the practice of “faith,” a 
mystical self-assimilation with Christ, so that 
one could say with the apostle, “It is not I 
that act but Christ that dwelleth in me.” 

Islam means submission in utter self-sur- 
render to the will of the “omnipotent, merciful 
One,” merciful because omnipotent. In such 
submission Mohammedanism sees the way to 
salvation from the misery awaiting those who 
act contrary to that will. 

No careful reading of the Bibles of the great 
religions can fail to take cognizance of the 
fact that dominant in each is a certain note 
serving to distinguish each religion from all 
the rest. Not only in the Vedas, with their 
reiteration of man’s dependence on the gods— 
the personified forces of Nature—but also and 

ah 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


more impressively in the Upanishads, the phil- 
osophic-religious prose-poems of the Hindu 
Bible, do we get the thought of the universe 
as thrilling, throbbing, pulsing with divine 
energy and divine meaning, so that this is 
irresistibly accepted as the dominant note of 
Hinduism. 

Similarly in the Dhamma, with its one hun- 
dred and eighty-six sermons of the Buddha, 
the conviction is driven home, over and over 
again, that the one thing most needful in life 
is moral self-discipline in the manner laid down 
by Gautama. Hence, this is inevitably settled 
upon as the dominant note of Buddhism. 

Without pausing to illustrate the parallels 
in the case of the other religions, obvious as 
they must be to every reader of the sacred 
books, let us look for a moment at the last of 
the series of columns in this synthesis of re- 
ligions. Reliable statistics on matters pertain- 
ing to religion are most difficult of access, par- 
ticularly in regard to the number of devoteés 
claimed for each of the seven great religions. 
Hence, any statistical list that may be pre- 

45 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


pared is certain to be adversely criticized in 
one or more particulars. What is here offered 
has been modestly put forward as merely ap- 
proximating accuracy, subject to revision with 
every improvement in statistical study. Ac- 
cepting, meanwhile, the data submitted in the 
ninth column of the chart, it is significant that 
only one-third of the world’s population is 
Christian. Out of a total of nearly a billion 
and a half, only 450 millions are Christians— 
a fact which has led many a thoughtful fol- 
lower of Jesus and Paul to question the no- 
tion that God would consign two-thirds of the 
people on the earth to everlasting perdition be- 
cause they accepted some other than the Chris- 
tian scheme of salvation. 

That there should be but a hundred thou- 
sand Zoroastrians is largely accounted for in 
terms of their exclusiveness, their religion for- 
bidding intermarriage with members of an- 
other persuasion. Only some ten thousand 
reside in Persia, the remainder are descendants 
of those exiles who in 1648 refused to become 
Moslems and found in Bombay a hospitable 

46 


EXPOSITION OF THE CHART 


refuge from Islamic persecution. The con- 
troversy is still being waged as to the relative 
strength of Buddhism and Christianity. Ad- 
herents of the former are fully persuaded that 
there are more Buddhists than Christians in 
the world, while zealous Christian missionaries 
are quick to contend for the precedence of 
their religion over all others, not only in point 
of numbers but also of ethical sublimity and 
saving power. ‘Till the controversy shall have 
been settled to the mutual satisfaction of the 
rival parties it were best to be content with as- 
signing to each of these religions a like num- 
ber of adherents, realizing, moreover, that in 
so doing we are approximately correct. 


CHAPTER V 
RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


It was in the wake of these revelations of 
comparative religion that there appeared in 
the United States some sixty years ago a 
cosomopolitanism in religion analogous to the 
political cosmopolitanism of the eighteenth 
century. The latter stood for a relationship 
among all the peoples of the earth in which 
national distinctions were to be completely 
obliterated in a blaze of universal brother- 
hood. It aimed to make all men and women 
like the courier who sat next me on the train 
from Naples to Rome—a man who, having 
traveled very extensively, had been brought 
into contact with people from all parts of the 
world and declared that as a consequence of 
these contacts he had learned to strip himself 
of all national characteristics, and proudly 
styled himself a cosmopolite. So this religious 

48 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


cosmopolitanism of the last century had a cor- 
responding aim, to obliterate all sectarian dis- 
tinctions in a blaze of universal religion. It 
focused attention on the points of resemblance 
in the various religions and exploited them in 
sermons and lectures, in books and tracts. It 
created a composite picture of the religions 
said to be more beautiful and satisfying than 
the portraiture of any one of them taken alone, 
a religion not Jewish nor Christian, not Mo- 
hammedan nor Buddhist nor any other single 
type, but the religion of universal man. Con- 
spicuous among’ the representatives of this re- 
ligious cosmopolitanism were Octavius Froth- 
ingham, Francis EK. Abbot, William J. Potter, 
Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Samuel 
Johnson, Samuel Longfellow, David Wasson, 
John Weiss—all of them prominently iden- 
tified with the Free Religious Association of 
America, an organization which did more than 
any other in its day to popularize such revela- 
tions of comparative religion as had then come 
to light. All these men had the melting pot 
idea applied to religion, melting away all the 
49 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


distinguishing features of the great religions 
in the interest of a nonsectarian cosmopoli- 
tanism, a fellowship that would embrace all 
mankind. Even so, the political cosmopoli- 
tanism of to-day gives symbolic expression to 
its faith in the passing of nationalities by melt- 
ing in an iron pot the flags of all the various 
nations and then drawing forth the flag of 
universal man! Thus the religious situation 
in the last half of the nineteenth century was 
analogous to the political in the last quarter 
of the eighteenth century. But, as in the case 
of the latter so in the former, a reaction set 
in. In the one it was away from cosmopoli- 
tanism to nationalism, in the other, away from 
universalism to sectarianism. Recall for a 
moment the reaction as it appeared in the po- 
litical world. It was heralded by the publi- 
cation, early in 1914, of Professor Adolf 
Harnack’s essay on “Deutsche Kultur,” in 
which he took the ground that German civili- 
zation has all the excellences found in other 
nations plus certain acquisitions peculiar to 
Germany alone. “Deutsche Kultur,” he held, 
50 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


was a “pleroma’—a fullness of content, con- 
sisting of everything admirable in the culture 
of other nationalities together with elements 
all its own and therefore it was a Kultur 
worthy of adoption by all the other nations of 
the earth. Then came the Englishman, 
Cramb, and the Scotchman, McNaughton, to 
tell us of the virtues of the Anglo-Saxon type. 
For them the white man’s burden was none 
other than to foist this type upon all other 
peoples as being clearly “the best.” Next in 
chronological order came a Serbian, making 
no extravagant claims for his nation’s attain- 
ments, but modestly, yet enthusiastically, bid- 
ding the rest of the world keep its eye on 
Serbia because she would yet develop the type 
of civilization which all would be eager to 
adopt. And then came Mr. Theodore Roose- 
velt to bespeak America’s claim to recognition 
but on which we need not dwell as it has long 
since been made familiar at home and abroad. 

Now, the corresponding reaction in the re- 
ligious realm was signalized by the appear- 
ance of James Freeman Clarke’s T'en Great 

51 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


Religions. I confess to some diffidence in cit- 
ing this book for I recall the remark made 
to me by Dr. James Martineau, the foremost 
liberal theologian of the nineteenth century, 
“Freeman Clarke is the New Englander whom 
I venerate most since the time of Channing.” 
Moreover, I am mindful of the fact that this 
book was first published sixty years ago when 
the science of comparative religion was still 
in its infancy. But after due allowance has 
been made for the great name of its author 
and the pioneer character of his book, the T'en 
Great Religions is unreservedly and avowedly 
sectarian. It is typical of the Christocentric 
method of approaching the non-Christian 
faiths, namely, looking upon Christianity as 
the absolute religion and estimating the worth 
of all others in terms of its absoluteness. Pro- 
fessor Jevons of Durham University, Eng- 
land, has recently issued a frank and explicit 
statement of the characteristic of this method. 
“The business of the science of religion,” he 
said, “is to discover all the facts necessary to 
an understanding of the growth and history of 
52 


68 a ae ns 


; 2. —— 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


religions. ‘The business of the applied sci- 
ence is to use the discovered facts to show 
that Christianity is the highest manifestation 
of the religious spirit, to see what each religion 
Jacks when compared with Christianity and 
wherein it improves on them.” * So Dr. Clarke, 
like Professor Jevons, starts with the hypoth- 
esis that Christianity is the absolute religion 
and proceeds, as an exponent of the science of 
comparative religion, to show wherein the 
other nine religions fall short of Christianity 
and wherein it improves on them. In this 
most popular of books on the subject we see 
Christianity set over against the other great 
religions in terms reminding us of Harnack’s 
essay. Indeed the very word “pleroma”’ is 
employed to indicate the preéminence of 

Christianity, possessing, as the author con- 
tends, everything of spiritual value to be 
found in the other religions plus ideal elements 
peculiar to it alone. In other words, Chris- 
tianity is made the criterion for evaluating 
all the non-Christian faiths on the ground that 


*From an address to the students of Hartford Theological 
Seminary. 
53 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


it is the one only perfect, the absolute religion, 
alone worthy to be universalized. See the pic- 
turesque design on the cover of the book, visu- 
alizing this sectarian standpoint. 

Next there appeared a succession of mono- 
graphs on the extant great religions, issued by 
the London Society for the Promotion of 
Christian Knowledge, carrying the claim of 
Clarke’s book further still, doing scant jus- 
tice to the non-Christian systems in the sec- 
tarian ardor with which Christianity was dis- 
cussed. ‘These monographs, written by men 
with the missionary spirit, exemplify what 
may be termed the missionary method of ap- 
proaching the non-Christian religions, the 
method which proceeds on the assumption that 
all religions may be classified as true and false, 
revealed and natural, divine and human. In 
the former class stands Christianity—and 
Judaism in so far as the origins of Christianity 
are rooted therein; in the other class all the 
other religions are grouped. Moreover, the 
missionary feels himself divinely ordained to 
bring to benighted pagans the one, only, true, 

54 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


divine, revealed religion and if possible con- 
vert them to it. The outstanding example of 
this missionary “call” is the Mohammedanism 
of the Prophet who enjoined his followers to 
make converts by force if need be, because re- 
fusal to acknowledge and obey Allah is re- 
bellion and rebellion must be suppressed, by 
persuasion if possible and if not, then by 
force.’ To be sure, these aggressions described 
by Mohammed were motivated on political no 
less than on religious grounds, for he, being 
head of a church-state, regarded the two as 
identical. On the other hand, we have to note 
that in his aggressive policy he tolerated “the 
revealed religions, Judaism and Christianity,” 
yet constraining their adherents to abandon 
their error and submit to Allah.* It is in this 
spirit that the otherwise excellent monographs — 
referred to were prepared. ‘They remind one 
of the Kast India Treaty which England en- 
acted in 1813, including a “‘missionaries’ char- 
‘ter’ which provided “for the introduction of 


2See the Koran, Suras 16:37, 84; 29:45; 42:12, 47, 64, 257. 
*Tbid., Suras 16:126; 42:12, 13, 14 and elsewhere. 
55 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


religion into British dominions in the Far 
East.” As if there had been no religion in 
that region before—the land which has pro- 
duced more religion than aught else; as if there 
were no “feeling after God if haply He might 
be found,” in Cashmere, in Benares, and Cal- 
cutta; as if spirituality were nonexistent 
among those who meditate on the banks of the 
Jumna, the Indus, and the Ganges! 
Following these monographs there came the 
work of Ameer Seyd, for many years a Judge 
on the British bench in Bengal, setting forth, 
with Islamic zeal, the finest features of Mo- 
hammedanism and over against them the worst 
in Christianity—reminding one of the familiar 
fable of AXsop on the Forester and the Lion. 
Walking together they fell to discussing the 
inevitable question, ““Which is the stronger, a 
lion or a man?” Finding it quite impossible 
to solve the problem to their mutual satis- 
faction, they came suddenly upon a piece of 
statuary representing a man in the act of 
throwing down a lion. “There,” said the 
woodsman, “‘you see the man is the stronger.” 
56 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


“Ah, yes!” said the lion, “but their positions 
would have been reversed if a lion had been 
the sculptor.” 

The application of the fable is obvious. Too 
many prejudiced Christians have been the 
sculptors of the non-Christian faiths and too 
many prejudiced non-Christians have essayed 
to carve the features of Christianity. Lam- 
entable failures have been scored on both sides. 

Lastly, there came that mammoth conven- 
tion at Chicago in 1893, the World’s Parlia- 
ment of Religions, an epoch-making assembly 
for which we should still be waiting had not 
the revelations of comparative religion been 
in some measure made known and had not 
“the sacred books of the East” been already 
discovered and translated into the leading lan- 
guages of the world. Who that was privileged 
to see it can ever forget the magnificent spec- 
tacle of the procession of the world’s great 
faiths! In the forefront walked Charles C. 
Bonney, a Swedenborgian layman, arm in arm 
with Cardinal Gibbons, the then highest dig- 

57 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


nitary of the Roman Catholic Church in this 
country. Behind them walked Christian 
clergyman and Jewish rabbi, Confucian moral- 
ist and Greek Church bishop. Mohammedan 
teacher and Buddhist monk, Baptist mission- 
ary and Hindu seer—one hundred and twenty- 
eight pairs in a triumphal procession of broth- 
erhood! Would that some painter had been 
present to put on canvas that memorable scene, 
symbolic of the death knell of sectarian exclu- 
siveness, prophetic of the coming peace among 
the conflicting faiths of mankind. And yet, at 
the sessions of the Parliament it was made 
plain that the ideal of religious relationship was 
still far from understood. For, one after an- 
other of the representatives of the various re- 
ligions claimed that his particular variety of 
religion had in it that which warranted the 
expectation of its eventual absorption of all 
the rest. Not a word did any delegate say 
of world-unity in religion except as conceived 
in terms of the ultimate triumph of his own 
religion over all other religions. ‘The fervent 
Buddhist pictured the universal sway of 
58 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


Gautama’s gospel. The enthusiastic Moham- 
medan made a like claim for the certain victory 
of Islamism. The eloquent, astute rabbi 
astounded his hearers by his presentation of 
Judaism in terms of universal religion, while 
the devout, mystic Christian prayed “for the 
redemption of the world through our Lord 
and Savior Jesus Christ.”” But the fact that 
the selfsame claim was made by each for his 
-own faith made the claim itself ridiculous. 
Each of these distinguished men wished to en- 
courage himself with his followers that their 
religion is sure to be universal, that the flow- 
ing tide is with them, but what a cold douche 
that facile optimism receives when we observe 
that their claims are mutually contradictory! 

What, then, is the corrective for this nar- 
row, nefarious, provincial, chauvinistic sectari- 
anism, analogous to the nationalism that has 
been on the increase during the past fifty 
years? There are those who advocate a re- 
turn to the religious cosmopolitanism exem- 
plified by the Free Religious Association of 
America, just as there are those who would 
59 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


remedy the deplorable species of nationalism 
that prevails by a return to the cosmopoli- 
tanism of Goethe and Schiller, of Addison 
_and Goldsmith, of Rousseau and D’Alembert, 
and of Thomas Paine, who said, “‘the world is 
my country,” and stoutly refused to ally him- 
self with any one nation exclusively. But no, 
the real remedy both in the political and in the 
religious realm is to be sought in the recogni- 
tion of and respect for differing religious types 
as for differing national types. Too long have 
we dwelt on the resemblances, the elements 
common to all religions. It is time we took 
account of the differences which comparative 
religion reveals no less than the likenesses. 
For, is not the life of a religion in those very 
features which differentiate it from its neigh- 
bors? The life of Christianity, for instance, 
is surely in the Sonship of Jesus Christ. Elim- 
inate that, ignore that, and the very essence of 
the Christian religion will be forfeited because 
it is the specific doctrine that characterizes 
Christianity, without which it would cease to 
be Christian. Mutual tolerance is undoubt- 
60 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


edly to be admired, mutual affection despite 
differences is more admirable still, but no ap- 
preciation is worthy of the name that involves 
indifference to differences that touch vital 
ideas; rather must such an attitude be re- 
garded as an index of spiritual lassitude. Nay 
more, the sole cure for the evil of sectarianism 
lies in a frank acknowledgment of differences 
and a genuine, deep-seated desire to respect 
them, such respect the sine qua non of inter- 
religious fellowship and codperation. 

In our political thinking we have reached 
the point where we see what a despicable 
simile is the melting pot as descriptive of 
America, for we know that each of the na- 
tions represented in our heterogeneous popu- 
lation has some excellence peculiarly its own 
and this we would fain incorporate into the 
making of the American ideal. Therefore, 
instead of likening America to a melting pot 
in which all the fine and precious character- 
istics of the various national types among us 
are to be obliterated and lost, I would com- 
pare America to a crown studded with precious 

61 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


jewels, each gem the contribution of one or 
another of the many nationalities that make 
up our American commonwealth. In our po- 
litical thinking we have reached the point 
where we see that the life of every nation is 
of inestimable worth and that, just as the in- 
dividuality of every single person must be re- 
spected and preserved if we are to have an 
ideal social state, so that which is fine and dis- 
tinctive in each of the various national types 
must be respected and preserved if we are 

to have a true internationalism. Similarly, in 
_ our religious thinking we must reach the point 
where we see that real unity can be attained 
not by obliterating unlikenesses but by adopt- 
ing the conception of mutual religious inter- 
relationship, seeing the unique excellence which 
each of the religions has to contribute to the 
enhancement of all the rest and receiving in 
return their manifold contributions toward the 
enrichment of its own gospel. 

We rejoice to realize that as a result of the 
revelations of comparative religion Christian 
missionary enterprise in the Orient is more 

62 


RESULTS OF THE REVELATIONS 


and more abandoning its original practice of 
insisting that the non-Christian residents there 
are forever “lost” unless they accept the Chris- 
tian scheme of salvation. At the annual meet- 
ing of the American Board of Commissioners 
for Foreign Missions, held in Boston in 1894 
(the year following the World’s Parliament 
of Religions), the question was raised, “Shall 
missionaries be allowed to go to Japan, China, 
India, and other Oriental countries unless they 
are prepared to teach the doctrines of hell and 
the fall of man?” But the question was 
promptly laid on the table; it has never been 
taken up since and we are safe in believing 
it never will be. 

Just how long the nails of sectarian war- 
fare will continue to be driven into the hands 
and feet of humanity no one at this time can 
tell. But out of the crucifixion will come a 
transfiguration, yea, out of the very throes 
of present-day controversy and schism a new 
conception of brotherhood will emerge, based 
on respect for differing types of faith, even 
as out of the throes of the Great World War 

63 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


a new conception of justice will be brought to 
birth, based on respect for differing national 
types. 

Just as fast as men and women everywhere 
grow to care more for spiritual freedom than 
for allegiance to tradition and creed while pro- 
foundly reverencing both; just as fast as men 
and women everywhere learn to care more for 
the triumph of truth than they care for the 
triumph of their sect, so fast will the world 
be prepared for that ideal religious fellow- 
ship that has been the dream of every age and 
of every race. 


CHAPTER VI 
AN ORGANIC FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


Before entering upon a discussion of this 
ideal religious fellowship and the prerequisites 
for its realization, let me register my profound 
and abiding sense of indebtedness to the late 
Dr. Francis Ellingwood Abbot, philosopher, 
author, editor, and one of the founders of the 
Free Religious Association of America. With- 
out the stimulus derived from his exposition of 
the organic constitution of the universe this 
chapter could not have been written. 

Time was when as yet none of the historical 
religions existed. In that remote antiquity re- 
ligion took on its simplest form. Primitive man 
believed that he stood in vital relation to the 
mysterious forces of Nature. He believed that 
they had it in their power to help or to harm 
him. Accordingly he praised them with his 
offerings, appeased them with his sacrifices. 

65 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


But in the course of centuries the primordial 
religion became differentiated into religions; 
the genus religion produced species, historical 
religions. And each one of these historical 
religions in turn became a genus to its species, 
the sects. And then each one of these sects in 
turn became a genus to its species, subsects, or 
right and left wings as we popularly call them. 
And finally we have the individual men and 
women members of these right and left wings— 
specimens of the subspecies. 

What caused the genus religion to become 
differentiated into species, historical religions? 
The answer must be given in terms of Nature’s 
law according to which all growth or develop- 
ment is made possible only by the self-differ- 
entiation of the genus into species. The only 
way in which the young tree can grow is by 
self-differentiation into branches, twigs, leaves 
and their organic codperation makes possible 
the life of the tree. Similarly religion could 
develop only by self-differentiation into special 
or historical religions. And this development 
was brought about by founders, prophets, 

66 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


leaders, teachers, emphasizing some one par- 
ticular aspect of the genus religion, as we see 
on reading the sacred scriptures of these his- 
torical religions. There we discover in each a 
dominant note, serving to differentiate the re- 
ligious system from all the other systems. 

But no sooner had these historical religions 
come into existence, than they entered on a 
career of mutual antagonism and hostility, the 
very opposite of what we see in the tree. For, 
the branches, twigs, and leaves, far from living 
in enmity one toward another, or even in ex- 
clusive independence of one another, engage in 
a cooperative task; each reaches out to the air 
and light in order to utilize them for the benefit 
of the tree; each discharges its peculiar func- 
tion in the economy of the total organism—an 
_ harmonious organic cooperation, in which all 
the parts are duly codrdinated and at the same 
time subordinated to the whole, the tree de- 
pending on them all as one organic whole. 

But when we turn to religion, differentiated 
into historical religions, we find no such har- 
monious organic codperation; on the con- 

67 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


trary we find jealousy, rivalry, antagonism, in- 
subordination of the parts to their higher 
whole. Only as a vision, as an ideal, as a mental 
picture of what it is supremely desirable to 
have, does organic cooperation of all the re- 
ligions exist. For, the melancholy truth is that 
the seven extant great religions have never 
transcended the stage of differentiation, have 
never achieved that unity in diversity which we 
see exemplified in the tree, have never matched 
the harmonious cooperation and subordination 
which every organism reveals. It should be 
understood that the term organism is here used 
not in that exclusive sense which makes it ap- 
plicable only to the “spiritual universe” of Pro- 
fessor Adler’s philosophy—a completed system 
of interrelated personalities in which every 
member is necessary to the whole and the whole 
necessary to every member, the number of 
members infinite, the relation necessary and all 
the members of equal worth; a conception of 
organism for which he has proposed the name 
“metorganic,’’ to distinguish it from the simple, 
empirical sense in which the term is commonly 
68 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


used and which derives directly from observa- 
tion of Nature. Given the spiritual sense of 
the term as a criterion of what organism means, 
this empirical usage will be pronounced inac- 
curate and insufficient. Still it is to be remem- 
bered that, to use Professor Adler’s words, 
“nowhere do we find in Nature any complete 
representation of such an arrangement” as is 
manifest in the spiritual acceptation of the 
term. Yet in the tree, in the human body, and 
perchance also in the solar system (if the reve- 
lations of modern astronomy are to be relied 
upon) examples are furnished of an actual 
system in which all the parts are duly codrdi- 
nated and simultaneously subordinated to their 
higher whole. It is with this connotation of 
the term organism that we are here concerned 
as supplying the motif, or ground, on which an 
organic fellowship of faiths may be founded. 
Now what we have to note concerning the his- 
torical religions is that they do not illustrate 
the organic relationships revealed in Nature. 
On the contrary, each of them, though a mere 
branch, has regarded itself as the tree; each, 
69 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


though only a part, has claimed to be the 
whole; each, though merely an organ, has 
looked upon itself as the organism. And what 
is thus true of the great religions is equally 
true of their sects. They, too, have failed to 
see their right and lawful place as parts of a 
higher whole, to be mutually codrdinated and 
simultaneously subordinated to their higher 
whole. 

Take, for example, the familiar Christian 
sects. Instead of seeing themselves as the 
children of a common parent, Protestantism; 
as grandchildren of a common grandparent, 
Christianity; as great-grandchildren of Juda- 
ism, each has at some time set itself up as the 
only true Christianity. Each, with more or 
less insistence, though itself only a branch, has 
declared itself to be the tree; each has prac- 
ticed an ambitious insubordination and thereby 
defeated realization of that harmonious co- 
operation patterned for man in the organic life 
of Nature. 

And in this failure of the great religions and 
of their sects to see themselves as species of a 

70 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


genus, as organs of an organism, as parts of a 
whole, as branches of a tree, as coequals in 
duties and in rights—in that deplorable failure 
lies the origin of all religious wars to exter- 
minate rivals, the origin of all persecution, of 
all missionary enterprise to convert the so- 
called heathen, the origin of all sectarianism or 
exclusiveness in religion. The word “sect’’ is 
derived from the Latin “sectum,”’ meaning cut 
off. Hence a sect is a part of humanity that 
has cut itself off from all the rest in order to 
live for itself and convert all the rest into ma- 
terial for its own growth. Whenever a polit- 
ical party in a state acts for itself alone and 
not also for the universal nation as its higher 
whole, it misconceives its true place and func- 
tion, it betrays the nation by partisan mis- 
government simply because it has cut itself 
off from its higher whole and acts as if it 
were that whole. Similarly whenever a re- 
ligious body acts for itself alone and refuses to 
subordinate itself to the higher whole of which 
it is only a part, when it aspires to be the 
Church Universal by converting all its rivals, it 
71 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


misconceives its true place and mission; it be- 
comes an actual hindrance to religious progress 
just because it has cut itself off from its own 
higher whole and claims to be itself that higher 
whole. It is everywhere a characteristic of the 
sect, whether in politics or in religion, that it 
looks on all other sects not as coequals and co- 
operative organs in the life of an organism 
which includes them all within itself, but rather 
as enemies to be conquered or converted. 

When it is claimed, as it so often has been 
in the past, that Christianity is the only true 
religion, Protestantism the only true Chris- 
tianity, the Episcopal Church the only true 
Protestant Church, the “High,” or the “Low,” 
or the “Broad,” church the only true, Chris- 
tian, Protestant, Episcopal Church, we see 
sectarianism doing its deadly work and par- 
alyzing all effort to make religious brotherhood 
a reality in the world. 

At that Parliament of Religions in Chicago, 
to which reference has already been made, no 
one saw the true ideal of religious fellowship; 
no one looked upon the religions there repre- 

72 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


sented as coequals in a sublime organic rela- 
tionship; no one saw that for lack of organic 
morality as patterned in every living organism 
the great religions missed fulfilling their high- 
est possible mission as codperators in the task 
of helping humanity to live its true life as one 
vast organic whole. 

But when, in the distant future, the sects 
great and small, as a result of practice in or- 
ganic morality shall have become thoroughly 
ashamed of their sectarianism and all their 
petty and puerile claims of supremacy and 
universality shall have been set aside; when all 
religious bodies shall have unfeignedly ac- 
knowledged themselves as merely parts of a 
whole, organs of an organism, then another 
World’s Parliament of Religions will be con- 
vened to point the way to a fellowship of faiths 
in which the principles of codrdination and 
subordination will be reaffirmed and hold sway 
as they do in every organism—the parts all 
duly codrdinated and all subordinated to their 
higher whole. But at once the question will be 
asked, where is this higher whole to which these 

73 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


religions are to be subordinated? And I must 
frankly answer, as yet it has no objective 
existence. It exists only in the minds of a few 
isolated thinkers as a dream, a vision, as the 
germ out of which the true and organic fellow- 
ship of faiths will eventually be evolved. Nor 
indeed should this fact surprise us, because it 
has its exact parallel in the history of the 
United States. In 1783 there was no such ob- 
jective reality as the nation of the United 
States. ‘That existed only in the minds of 
Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and their 
political coworkers, as a dream, a vision, the 
germ out of which the organic fellowship of 
states would eventually be evolved. In 1783 
there existed only a loose federation of thirteen 
independent colonies, but no higher whole to 
which they could be subordinated. But when, 
in 1787, these thirteen colonies, through their 
representatives, agreed to act coordinately and 
to subordinate themselves to a higher whole 
expressed in the Constitution of the United 
States, then the dream, the vision, the ideal of 
a nation of the United States became a con- 
74 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


erete fact. In other words, the nation of the 
United States shaped itself out of the thirteen 
colonies by their subordinating themselves as 
organs to their higher organism. 

To-day there exists no organized fellowship 
of faiths. All we see is a trend in the direction 
of a world-church or religious society. The 
“merger”? movement steadily points to the com- 
ing harmonious organic cooperation, a unity 
analogous to that which we see in the tree and 
in every other organism; one tree with many 
branches, one body with many members, one 
organism with many organs, and one subtle 
lifeblood coursing through the whole, making 
each part kin with every other. To-day we 
see it only in the minds of a few isolated souls, 
the germ of an historical world church, to be 
eventually evolved, if progress in the direction 
of the ideal continues and voluntary self- 
subordination of the part to the whole is prac- 
ticed. That is the fundamental and inexorable 
condition upon which its realization depends— 
a voluntary self-subordination, analogous to 
that of the branches, the twigs, and the leaves | 

75 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


to the whole tree. Four additional prereq- 
uisites there are of which account must be 
taken. In briefest form they are the following: 

First, all the Bibles of the great religions, 
with their respective inferior and superior con- 
tents, must stand on a basis of recognized 
equality as human literature, and their moral 
and religious value be determined by enlight- 
ened reason and conscience. 

Second, all the Masters of the great religions 
must stand on a basis of recognized equality as 
human leaders, each to be revered and followed 
according to the truth he has to teach and the 
inspiration that may be derived from the story 
of his life. 

Third, all religious organizations, with their 
differences of form and creed, must stand on 
a basis of recognized equality as human insti- 
tutions, to be evaluated by the measure in which 
they satisfy human needs and the contributions 
they make to the religious progress of man- 
kind. 

Fourth, all the sects, great and small, must 
confess, with unalloyed sincerity, that their 

76 


FELLOWSHIP OF FAITHS 


Bible is only a part and not the whole of re- 
ligious truth, that their founder is only one 
among the many spiritual stars with which the 
firmament of religion has been studded and not 
the only Way, Truth, and Life. 

Of course, we are very far off from the ful- 
fillment of these prerequisites. But just as 
surely as the Peace Conference at The Hague 
in 1897 foreshadowed the coming of a true 
League of Nations, based upon organic moral- 
ity, at which the present League has not as 
yet arrived, so surely will the coming World’s 
Parliament of Religions foreshadow a Fellow- 
ship of Faiths built upon the organic idea, with 
its two principles of codrdination and _ sub- 
ordination. 

And just exactly as at Philadelphia, in 1787, 
the dream of political unity was realized by the 
voluntary self-subordination of the separate 
colonies to the higher whole of the United 
States, so also, by a like obedience of the sep- 
arate religions to the law of organic oneness, 
will the dream of a religious unity, a fellow- 
ship of faiths, be realized. But the separate 

17 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


religions will have to wait for it, just as those 
thirteen jealous colonies had to wait for the 
one nation of the United States. And those 
religions will wait in vain for that consumma- 
tion unless, like the independent colonies, they 
learn to subordinate themselves to the higher 
whole of which they are only parts. 


CHAPTER VII 
UNITY, NOT UNIFORMITY 


From what has thus far been said it must be 
clear that organic unity in religion no more 
involves uniformity of belief, or of worship, or 
of church government, than does the organic 
political unity of the United States involve 
uniformity of statutes, or of rights, or of cus- 
toms. In both unities the existence of diversi- 
ties is as essential as in the case of the tree with 
its branches, twigs, and leaves. The very last 
thing to be desired by believers in a fellowship 
of faiths is a uniform religion in which all dis- 
tinctive features that are fine and helpful in 
the historical religions have been obliterated. 
Much less is the effacement of the separate re- 
_ligions themselves desirable for unity. The 
thirteen colonies did not efface themselves when 
they agreed to unite in the new nation of the 
United States. Neither will the historical re- 
ligions efface themselves when the hour of their 
organic union shall have arrived. A sectarian 

79 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


death each of them must die, of necessity, but 
in spiritual substance will they all survive. 
“One religion for everybody” is surely a 
shallow and vain expectation. On the other 
hand it is reasonable to believe that there will 
be a steady increase of agreement on debated 
religious questions, just as in the field of nat- 
ural science unanimity has already been 
reached on many a disputed issue. ‘Through 
the conflict of opinion among minds governed 
by respect for scientific method, a body of ac- 
cepted truth has been established among scien- 
tific men. And when theologians shall have 
risen to the plane of scientific men, then the- 
ology, the science of religion, will take a place 
among the sciences, which it has hitherto held 
only in theory. But no one need fear universal 
uniformity even then, for no matter what 
measure of unanimity be reached, there will 
always be, in a growing world, a residuum, in 
theology as in physics, upon which agreement 
remains to be realized. Certain it is that a 
finite being living in an infinite universe can 
never hope to say the last word on any subject. 
80 


CHAPTER VIII 
THE BAHAI MOVEMENT AND ITS MISSION 


In as much as a fellowship of faiths is at 
once the dearest hope and ultimate goal of the 
Bahai Movement, it behooves us to take cog- 
nizance of it and its mission. So modern is this 
movement that the first public news of it to 
reach the United States was only thirty-two 
years ago at the World’s Parliament of Re- 
ligions in Chicago. There, at that mammoth 
convention, a Presbyterian missionary from 
Bayreuth, Syria, closed an appeal for mission- 
ary support with these impressive words: 
“Just outside the fortress of Acca on the 
Syrian coast there died a few months ago the 
famous Persian sage and Babi saint named 
Baha ’Ullah (the Glory of God), who has 
given utterance to sentiments so noble, so 
Christlike, that I cannot do better than close 
my address with these his words: ‘These fruit- 
less strifes, these ruinous wars shall pass away 

81 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


and the most great peace shall come; all nations 
shall be one in faith and all men shall be 
brothers.’ ”’ 

To-day this religious movement has a mil- 
lion and more adherents, including people from 
all parts of the globe and representing a re- 
markable variety of race, color, class, and 
creed. It has been given literary expression in 
a veritable library of Asiatic, Kuropean, and 
American works to which additions are an- 
nually made as the movement grows and grap- 
ples with the great problems that grow out of 
its cardinal teachings. It has a long roll of 
martyrs to the cause for which it stands, twenty 
thousand in Persia alone, proving it to be a 
movement worth dying for as well as worth 
living by. 

From its inception it has been identified with 
Baha ’Ullah, who paid the price of prolonged 
exile, imprisonment, bodily suffering, and 
mental anguish for the faith he cherished—a 
man of imposing personality as revealed in his 
writings, characterized by intense moral ear- 
nestness and profound spirituality, gifted with 

82 


THE BAHAI MOVEMENT 


the selfsame power so conspicuous in the char- 
acter of Jesus, the power to appreciate people 
ideally, that is, to see them at the level of their 
best and to make even the lowest types think 
well of themselves because of potentialities 
within them to which he pointed but of which 
they were wholly unaware; a prophet whose 
greatest contribution was not any specific doc- 
trine he proclaimed, but an informing spiritual 
power breathed into the world through the 
example of his life and thereby quickening 
souls into new spiritual activity. Surely a 
movement of which all this can be said deserves, 
nay, compels our respectful recognition and 
sincere appreciation. 

It had its rise in Mohammedan Persia 
nearly a century ago when that fair country 
was torn by religious schism and _ sectarian 
strife. In the words of Abdul Baha, son of 
Baha ’Ullah: “At a time when in the Orient 
there existed the utmost state of strife and 
sedition, when warfare raged between the re- 
ligions and between the various sects, darkness 
encompassed the horizon of the Orient and each 

83 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


religion asserted its claim over the other, at 
such time and under such circumstances His 
Holiness, Baha ’Ullah, shone from the horizon 
of the Kast.” 

Just as to-day increasing Christian sec- 
tarianism has given rise to a movement among 
the Episcopalians for a “World Conference on 
Faith and Order” among the Presbyterians, 
Baptists, and Congregationalists in Canada for 
a “United Church,” so eighty-one years ago 
in the Orient under kindred conditions a cor- 
responding movement arose in the interest of 
world unity in religion. In other words, the 
Bahai Movement originated as a reaction from 
those religious schisms and feuds to which 
Abdul Baha referred. Their prevalence in 
Persia in the forties of the last century points 
to the cause whence the most characteristic de- 
mand of the Bahai movement arose, the de- 
mand for unity. Taking precedence over all 
else in its gospel is the message of unity in 
religion—a unity such as has been described in 
the preceding chapter, a unity not to be com- 
passed by even the Christian name, great and 

84 


THE BAHAI MOVEMENT 


deep as is the reverence of Bahais for that 
name. For they rightly hold, as did their 
illustrious founder, that it is not enough to 
have fellowship in Christ, or in Moses, or in 
Buddha, it must be all-embracing in its scope 
and strictly universal in its allegiance. And, 
indeed, if human brotherhood is ever to be 
anything more than the grim caricature that 
we see to-day in the rivalries, jealousies, antip- 
athies, and deadly competitions among the 
religions and among their sects, then I hold 
that it is of the utmost importance that there 
should be in the world at least one such move- 
ment as the Bahai, dedicated to promoting the 
realization of that sublime ideal. 
Supplementing the gospel of unity in re- 
ligion is that of other unities; racial, linguistic, 
economic, ethical; set forth in that thesaurus of 
religious literature which constitutes the sacred 
scriptures of the Bahai movement and of which 
a noble edition was recently published under 
the competent editorship of the Secretary of 
the National Council, Mr. Horace Holley. 
Nay, more, these great unities have been sum- 
85 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


marized and expounded with consummate skill 
and in the exquisite poetical prose of Abdul 
Baha in his “Divine Philosophy.” There, under 
the inspiring headline of “independent investi- 
gation of truth,” we find: “The unity of hu- 
manity, the unity of the foundations of all re- 
ligions, the harmony of science and religion, 
equality of the sexes, the abolition of prejudice, 
universal peace, solution of the economic prob- 
Jem, a universal language, an impartial inter- 
national court for maintaining world peace,” 
ideals with which all liberal people are in 
hearty accord. Only as to the mode in which 
these ideals are to be realized will differences 
of opinion obtain. And though both Baha 
"Ullah and Abdul Baha have made what must 
be regarded as permanent contributions in 
pointing the way to a realization of their ideals, 
it is certain that some of their affirmations will 
have to be modified, if not superseded, by rea- 
son of changed conditions which they could not 
have foreseen; witness for example what has 
been written regarding Esperanto as the com- 
ing universal language and of “focusing at- 
86 


THE BAHAI MOVEMENT 


tention on resemblances to the neglect of dif- 
ferences” as the way to attaining unity in 
religion. 

Just now the paramount need of the Bahai 
Movement is an authoritative translation of the 
principal works of the founder with explana- 
tory comments, to the end that the reader be 
left in no doubt as to the precise meaning of 
what Baha ’Ullah wrote, especially in regard 
to crucial points of belief and of practice on 
which differences of interpretation still per- 
sist. It was surely unfortunate to have a 
monograph on “Bahaism” appear while the 
precise meaning of the Master’s thought, as 
given by the author, is still in dispute. 

It is the crowning glory of the Bahai Move- 
ment that while deprecating sectarianism in its 
preaching, it has faithfully practiced what it 
preached by refraining from becoming itself a 
sect. Far from endeavoring to convert all out- 
side its fellowship to such doctrines as are gen- 
erally held by the members—whether of 
“theism,” or of “revelation,” or of “‘intuition”’ 
as a criterion of truth—it has assiduously 

87 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


sought to help men and women of all persua- 
sions to realize the highest ideals of religion. 
Nothing could be more foreign to the spirit of 
this movement or further from its purpose than 
the attempt to displace all existing religions 
by itself. It frowns upon the notion that any 
one of the existing great religions will ever 
triumph over all the rest. And, far from bid- 
ding any one sever his connection with the re- 
ligion he has inherited or adopted, the Bahai 
Movement bids him cling to it, so long as rea- © 
son and conscience sanction his allegiance. 
Thus in the best sense of the word it is a mis- 
sionary movement. Its representatives do not 
attempt to impose any beliefs upon others, 
whether by argument or by bribery; rather do 
they seek to put beliefs that have illumined | 
their own lives within the reach of those who 
feel they need illumination. No, not a sect, 
not a part of humanity cut off from all the 
rest, living for itself and aiming to convert all 
the rest into material for its own growth; no, 
not that, but a leaven, causing spiritual fer- 
mentation in all religions, quickening them 

88 


THE BAHAI MOVEMENT 4 


with the spirit of catholicity and fraternalism 
—such I take it is the essence of the Bahai 
Movement. 

Clearly, then, we are dealing with a fellow- 
ship, an influence, a leaven, a movement that 
fights shy of sectarian enthusiasms, that abhors 
the formation of a close corporation with ex- 
clusive privileges, for that has been a greater 
obstruction to brotherhood than either kingly 
ambition or commercial greed. This movement 
has no priesthood, no college, no ecclesiastical 
hierarchy, but, on the contrary, is conspicuous | 
for its distrust of organization, consti- 
tutions, by-laws, and other familiar fetters 
of the western world. But I see foreboding 
signs, I hear disquieting rumors of a tendency 
among some within this movement to have it 
crystallized within a sectarian mold, to have it 
stand explicitly for a certain set of theological 
ideas, and then make this the test of fellowship. 
No more serious or fateful calamity could be- 
fall this movement than to have it relegated to 
the limbo of sectarianism. Let it hold fast to 
its distrust of organization, let it permit only 

89 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


that minimum of organization which is essen- 
tial to the fulfillment of its leavening work, and 
not only will there lie before it an ever increas- 
ing field of usefulness but, forfeiting none of 
its beneficent power, it will go on from strength 
to strength in the fulfillment of its invaluable 
and indispensable mission. 

Close to Chicago and fronting on Lake 
Michigan, a Bahai temple is in process of com- 
pletion. Designed by a Belgian architect— 
himself a Bahai—the building is symbolic of 
the characteristic features of the faith and, as 
such, marks a bold and original departure from 
all the traditional schools of architecture. This 
temple is dedicated to the free and untram- 
meled investigation of truth, to the harmony 
of science and religion, to the unity of work 
and worship, to the promulgation of universal 
brotherhood and international peace. Around 
the central building, open to the devoteés of 
every religion and of every sect, other buildings 
will be erected, educational and philanthropic, 
and these, too, as Abdul Baha said, “are to be 
open to the people of all nations, no line of de- 

90 


THE BAHAI MOVEMENT 


marcation will be drawn and charities will be 
dispensed irrespective of color, creed, or race, 
with love for all.” Who shall say but that just 
as the little company of the Mayflower, landing 
on Plymouth Rock, proved to be the small be- 
ginning of a mighty nation, the ideal germ of 
a democracy which, if true to its principles, 
shall yet overspread the habitable globe, so the 
little company of Bahais exiled from their Per- 
sian home may yet prove to be the small be- 
ginning of a world-wide movement, the ideal 
germ of democracy in religion, the Universal 


Church of Mankind. 


CHAPTER IX 


ETHICAL RELIGION AND THE RELIGION OF THE 
FUTURE 


At the very outset let it be understood that 
nothing is further from my purpose than an 
attempt to forecast the content of the religion 
of the future. That would seem a brazenly 
presumptuous and a pitifully profitless task. — 
In his magnum opus, An Ethical Philosophy 
of Life the founder of the Ethical Movement 
has presented conceptions of God, worship, 
prayer, immortality, and consolation that may 
perchance become the theological substance of 
the religion of the future, though, of course, 
he makes no such claim for them; conceptions 
radically at variance with those current in the 
great religions. Incidentally, it should be re- 
marked that these conceptions are by no means 
to be regarded as constituting the faith of the 
Ethical Movement, but rather as representa- 
tive of no one but Professor Adler himself. 
The connotation he gives the word God, when 
he uses it, is that of a “commonwealth of 

92 


ETHICAL RELIGION 


spirits,’ as against the popular monarchical 
idea; a spiritual organism composed of indi- 
vidual organs; “the godhead an infinite host of 
beings, a vast community of spiritual life of 
which each human being is, in his inmost self, 
a citizen.” The object of Professor Adler’s 
worship is just this transcendental personality, 
this “infinitesimal component of the infinite 
God,” this “member of the spiritual universe,” 
that is, his fellow man; “not indeed his earthly 
self, not the clay form, but the perfect god- 
head in him, the veiled figure, veiled by the 
form of flesh and blood which is often an ob- 
ject of loathing.” This innermost essential 
spiritual self in his fellow man, this “infinitesi- 
mal component of the infinite God” as against 
“an imaginary figure floating somewhere above 
the clouds” is the object of Professor Adler’s 
worship. With reference to prayer he would 
not slight its uses, but in so far as it is “utter- 
ance” it is for him “silenced in the presence 
of the Unutterable.’ “Any one who can 
pray,” he says, “does not fully realize the in- 
effableness of the divine life.” But prayer 
93 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


as “a way of putting before one the moral 
ideal is needed”; such prayer “makes us feel 
ashamed and stirs to moral effort.” Instead 
of “addressing a God beyond the sky,” the new ~ 
rule of prayer would be (in his judgment) 
to respond to “the call of the godhead in your 
neighbor” eliciting the latent best in him and 
thereby in yourself. And when, at death, this 
object of worship seems to have gone, con- 
solation is to be found by realizing that it is 
“only the clay form that has gone, the earthly 
self into which a stellar ray descended.” 'The 
earthly form “crumbles into a little heap of 
dust but the star remains, one in the endless 
constellation of the spiritual universe.” We 
have not lost our mate, for, “‘the invincible self 
is unbegotten and imperishable and that which 
is best in us is inseparably united to that which 
is best in him.” * 

Such, in bare outline, are the ideas domi- 
nant in the ethical religion of Professor Adler. 
~ Whether or not they will have a place in the 
1See Professor Adler’s address of December 17, 1916, pub- 
lished in the Standard. See also the closing chapter of his 


Magnum Opus and of his Reconstruction of the Spiritual 
Ideal. 
94 


ETHICAL RELIGION 


religion of the future remains to be seen. They 
have not become and may never become part 
of the common belief of all members of the 
Ethical Movement. Never can they become 
part of a creed of the Ethical Movement for 
it has no creed, nay, it is fundamentally op- 
posed to the formation and establishment of a 
creed, aiming to protect religion from the 
danger of becoming petrified and the Move- 
ment from becoming stagnant and succeeding 
in this aim just to the degree that it continues 
to be a Movement rather than an Attainment, 
leaving to the particular group devoted to the 
cultivation of religion (as to every other 
group) the privilege and opportunity freely 
to take whatever religious position it will, pro- 
vided it refrain from committing the Move- 
ment thereto. 

Whatever the content of the religion of the 
future may be, we are warranted in believing 
that it will spring from spiritual anguish even 
as did the Ethical Movement and each of the 
historical religions.” Nay, it will be a two- 


2See my World’s Great Religions, p. 227 for illustrations 
of this fact. 
95 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


fold anguish, if we mistake not, from which 
the religion of the future will originate—so- 
cial and spiritual. Social, in so far as it re- 
lates to the maladjustments of society, the 
painfully distorted relations that obtain, for 
example, between parent and child, husband 
and wife, the various social classes, nation 
and nation. Spiritual, also, will the anguish 
be in the sense that it will relate to religious 
beliefs which once satisfied spiritual needs but 
which can serve no longer because out of ac- 
cord with the best thought of the day; beliefs 
for which no adequate substitutes have as yet 
been found. For all who find themselves un- 
able to fellowship with one or another of the 
historical religions and who can no longer ac- 
cept the current teaching with regard to God, 
prayer, and worship, there exists a genuine 
sense of loss, a consciousness of real, spiritual 
suffering. From this anguish the religion of 
the future will, in part, originate and seek to 
supply the lack of the historical religions. 
Just how it will fulfill this function, obviously 
no one can now say. 
96 


CHAPTER X 


THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS AND THE RELIGION 
OF THE FUTURE 


Any attempt at detailed description of the 
coming religion must be set down as futile and 
chimerical. Rather would I touch upon certain 
features of the historic religions that the : 
religion of the future may be expected to im- 
prove upon. Reserving Christianity for sep- 
arate consideration, let us note some particu- 
lars in which it is safe to assume advance upon 
the historic religions will be achieved. To be- 
gin with, all seven of them are based on the 
_ principle of authority. All alike appeal to a 
recognized founder as having “the words of 
eternal life,” as having revealed all that is re- 
quired for faith and practice. But the religion 
of the future we may well believe will have the 
principle of freedom for its basis, holding that 
no one founder (or all founders together) has 

97 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


revealed the totality of moral and religious 
truth. Never yet has a complete and final 
code of ethics or a universally satisfying 
“breviary” been compiled. Nor can we be- 
lieve they ever will be, seeing the diversity of 
spiritual taste that will ever obtain and the 
ever recurring rise of new social and economic 
conditions generating new problems for the so- 
lution of which the old formulas prove insuf- 
ficient. Nor, again, can any one founder serve 
as the perfect exemplar for mankind; none can 
include within his own personality the totality 
of perfections possible to all persons, involv- 
ing, as this does, opposite qualities like those 
that differentiate the sexes. Thus, while 
gratefully acknowledging and cherishing the 
moral and religious contributions made by 
these founders to the advancement of the 
spiritual life and while reverently recognizing 
the sublime character of each and the quali- 
ties with which each peculiarly shone, the re- 
ligion of the future will deem it treason to the 
infinite moral ideal to bend the knee to any 
one prophet exclusively, or to bind the reason 
98 


THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 


to any one book exclusively. To all sacred | 
scriptures, of the present as of the past, the 
religion of the future will turn, seeking in each 
book that which may serve to inspire and en- 
rich the religious life. To all the great masters 
of religions will it bow, yet refuse to become 
the disciple of any one exclusively, evaluating 
each according to the truth he has to teach 
and the inspiration to be derived from the 
record of his life. 

Once more, the fellowship of each of the 
great religions is exclusive in that it some- 
times explicitly and more often tacitly admits 
to membership only those who accept its 
founder and its book. To enter the Moham- 
medan communion one must accept Moham- 
med as the Prophet of God and the Koran 
as the divinely revealed standard of faith and 
conduct—a test that excludes all but two and 
a half millions of the people of the earth. To 
come into the Christian communion of the 
orthodox type one must accept Jesus as 
Savior and God;.if the heterodox type be 
sought, one must accept Jesus as, at least, an 

99 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


all-sufficing guide to the moral life—tests that 
shut out two-thirds of the human race. But 
the fellowship of the religion of the future will 
be cosmopolitan and free, refraining from the 
requirement of assent to any doctrine or be- 
lief whatsoever; uniting men on the only basis 
that is truly universal, namely, the desire to 
live upward toward the triple ideal of truth, 
love, and duty, let their theology be what it 
may. Assuredly, it is not enough for men 
and women to be brothers and sisters in Christ, 
or in Moses, or in Mohammed; Christian ex- 
clusiveness is just as intolerable as any other. 
We must be brothers and sisters in Humanity 
with all the rest of mankind; that is what a 
true fellowship requires, what democracy in 
religion means. With no lesser ideal can 
the modern spirit, educated in catholicity and 
in appreciation, be permanently satisfied. 
Christian unity, toward which so many note- ~ 
worthy attempts are now being made, is to 
be welcomed indeed and, above all, as a step 
toward that nobler, more inclusive unity which 
the presence among us of millions of Jews 
100 


THE HISTORICAL RELIGIONS 


and an ever increasing number of Moham- 
medans, Buddhists, and Hindus ealls for as 
never before. For the consummation of that 
sublime ideal the religious world is far from 
prepared. But when, in the distant future, 
the sects, great and small, as a result of prac- 
tice in organic morality, shall have become 
thoroughly ashamed of their sectarianism and 
_of their puerile claims of supremacy and uni- 
versality shall have been set aside; when all 
shall have unfeignedly acknowledged them- 
selves merely parts of a whole, organs of an 
organism in which the party are all codrdi- 
nated and simultaneously subordinated to the 
whole, then and not till then will the noble 
dream of a fellowship of faiths be fulfilled. 


CHAPTER XI 


CHRISTIANITY AND THE RELIGION OF THE 
FUTURE 


Attention has been directed to the notion 
that some one of the historic religions will 
supersede all the rest and so become the re- 
ligion of the future. The utter futility of 
this expectation was admirably expressed by 
the brilliant and lamented Hindu, Viveka- 
nanda. Asked if he believed that any one of 
the seven great religions would eventually sup- 
plant all the rest, he replied: “If anybody 
hopes that any one of the Great Religions will 
triumph over all the rest and become the uni- 
versal religion to him I say: Brother, yours 
is an impossible hope. If anybody dreams of 
the survival of any religion and the destruc- 
tion of all the rest, I pity him from the bot- 
tom of my heart.” Yet this dream is still 
cherished by many a devoteé of each of the 

102 


CHRISTIANITY 


great religions. For instance, Dharmapala, 
the distinguished Buddhist of Ceylon, said in 
my hearing, “The marvel of Buddhism is its 
incontestable capacity for expansion and this 
saves it from ever becoming outgrown.” The 
lamented Jeneghier D. Cola, who represented 
Zoroastrianism at the World’s Parliament of 
Religions, told me that he considered the ex- 
pansive power of his religion “literally bound- 
less.” 

But our concern is more especially with 
Christianity. What may be said for it? There 
are those—notably Professor Kucken in Ger- 
many, M. Loisy in France, Dean Inge in Eng- 
land, Dr. Fosdick in the United States—who 
hold that Christianity is destined to survive 
all other religions because it has “‘an inherent 
expansiveness,’ fitting it to be forever iden- 
tical with the best ethical thinking of every 
age. Yet a candid examination of this and 
all the other historic faiths reveals the fact that 
for each of them there is a limit beyond which 
it cannot “expand”’ and at the same time re- 
tain its identity. Well enough for Dr. Fos- 

103 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


dick to maintain that the Christianity of 
Augustine advanced upon that of the apostle 
Paul, that of Luther upon Augustine’s, and 
Beecher’s, in turn, upon the Christianity of 
Luther. But the progressive professor of 
Union Theological Seminary seems to think 
that this process of advance can go on indefi- 
nitely without loss of Christianity’s identity. 
Nay, running through all these historic Chris- 
tianities from the first century to our own time 
is a common thread of belief, namely, that 
Jesus differed from all other human beings not 
only in degree but also in kind and that He 1s 
the sole Savior of mankind. As long as that 
thread remains the religion continues to be 
Christian. In other words, there is a limit 
beyond which Christianity cannot vary and 
remain Christian, just as in the evolution of 
life forms there was a limit beyond which rep- 
tiles could not vary and remain reptiles. 
When the anatomical creeping structure be- 
came, by “natural selection,” a flying struc- 
ture, then that which was reptile became bird 
and was therefore no longer called reptile but 
104 


CHRISTIANITY 


bird. So in the evolution of liberal religion 
when a man surrendered his belief in the speci- 
fied uniqueness of Jesus and in him as the sole 
Savior of mankind, he ceased to be a Christian 
and was in duty bound to adopt a different de- 
scriptive name for himself. By a like process 
of inquiry it could be shown that there is a 
corresponding: “limit” in each of the other six 
great religions, a limit beyond which it cannot 
“expand” and retain its identity. Assuredly 
is this notion of continuous expansiveness il- 
lusory, as illusory as the rapid movement of 
the landscape to the passenger looking out 
from the window of the “express” on which 
he rides. Whatever progress any one of the 
great religions, as such, can achieve is inev- 
itably conditioned by the retention of that 
cardinal, differentiating characteristic without 
which the identity of the religion would disap- 
pear. Thus, the “inherent expansiveness”’ at- 
tributed to each of the great religions by 
earnest representatives is no guarantee of its 
survival, for, under the influence of modern 
thought it might so expand as to be beyond 
105 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


recognition and thus require a new name, the 
raison détre of the original name having dis- 
appeared in the expanding process. Every 
religion owes its name to a particular belief 
touching the person of its founder or some 
characteristic of its devoteés. Let the progress 
of religious thought compel the surrender of 
that belief and, of necessity, the original name 
of the religion becomes a misnomer. 

A contributor to the Methodist Review has 
recently propounded an entirely different basis 
than that of “inherent expansiveness” to jus- 
tify the dream of Christianity’s triumph over 
all other religions. He writes: “The further I 
proceed in my study of the world’s religions 
the more deeply is the impression borne in that 
the Christian religion alone has reached the 
goal. No wonder our religion is called Chris- 
tianity. We have found God in Christ; the 
followers of other faiths through no fault of 
their own have never had the privilege of this 
experience.” * 

How truly naive is this notion that God 


1 Methodist Review, May, 1921. 
106 


CHRISTIANITY 


has vouchsafed to one-third of the human 
family knowledge of Himself and allowed the 
remaining two-thirds to live without this su- 
preme privilege, cutting them off from it, 
“through no fault of their own,” granting to a 
minority of His children that which the inno- 
cent majority is mysteriously denied. Nor 
has it occurred to this Methodist minister that 
there are Parsees who hold they have “found 
God” in Zoroaster, and Hindus who have 
found Him in Krishna, not to mention devo- 
tees of other religions who testify to a like 
spiritual experience and who feel the same 
sense of pity for unprivileged Christians that 
the Methodist writer expressed for “the fol- 
lowers of other faiths” deprived of the Chris- 
tian experience “through no fault of their 
own.” 

In his latest play, entitled “The Next Re- 
ligion,” Zangwill makes the physician say to 
the church rector, “Is not Christ’s religion 
the next religion; what have we found more 
beautiful and uplifting than the teachings of 
Jesus?” Kx-President Eliot of Harvard Uni- 

107 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


versity, writing in the Atlantic Monthly on 
“The Religion of the Future,” falls in with 
Zangwill’s physician, declaring that “Jesus 
will remain the supreme teacher in religion,” 
the context clearly conveying the conviction 
that Christianity, as the religion of Jesus, will 
be the religion of the future. Let me hasten 
* to acknowledge the truth and beauty and up- 
hfting power of the teachings of Jesus, more 
especially those in which he advanced upon 
the ethics of the Old Testament and of the 
Apocrypha. ‘Yet must it be frankly con- 
fessed that the teachings of Jesus are insuf- 
ficient for the needs of the modern world even 
as were the teachings of ancient Judaism in- 
sufficient for Jesus’ day.: Just as Jesus was 
driven beyond the so-called Mosaic Law, so 
modern ethical thinking has been driven be- 
yond the ethics of Jesus, daring to supple- 
ment his teaching as he dared to supplement 
that of his revered predecessors. He respected 
the authority of Moses but he did not regard 
it as infallible or final. Hence he dared to 
advance upon the ethical precepts transmitted 
108 


CHRISTIANITY 


from Sinai. He, therefore, is most like Jesus 
who in this respect follows his example, dar- 
ing to differ from or advance upon him as 
did he upon older masters. Just here permit 
me emphatically to remark and with deep 
earnestness and intensity of conviction, that 
I will be second to no one in my admiration 
and reverence for the person and work of 
Jesus, yet I hold we can no more tie to the 
ethics of Jesus as the complete and final code 
that orthodox Christians regard it than the 
Chinese can tie to the ethics of Confucius now 
that rehabilitation of the empire has been 
established. ‘To an ever larger number of un- 
prejudiced scholars, caring only for the truth, 
whatever it may be, it is apparent that Jesus’ 
teaching did not cover and was not intended 
to cover the whole of the moral life—social, 
national, and international—but only the 
ethics of personal life, his one and all absorb- 
ing concern being the moral preparedness of 
his people for entrance into the new order of 
society which God would shortly usher in 
through his Messiah. Pray do not imagine 
109 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


that this view of the limitation Jesus set him- 
self for his ministry is held only by ethical 
leaders. An Episcopalian professor writing 
in the Hibbert Journal frankly commits him- 
self to the very same view. I quote his precise 
words: “Our Lord carefully refrained from 
expressing an opinion on political and eco- 
nomic problems which were beyond the scope 
of his mission. His concern was not with the 
state, but with the citizen, not so much with 
humanity as with man.” ‘This wise restriction 
of his teaching to the problems of the personal 
life explains the silence of Jesus on questions 
social, national, and international that baffle 
and perplex us to-day.’ Consider, for example, 
that problem which did not exist in Jesus’ day, 
the problem of the right relation of employer 
and employees in big business, a problem that 
originated about 1760 when the old domestic 
system of industry gave place to the factory 
system, machinery took the place of tools, and 
the long-established close relation between 
master and men was broken and the “wage- 


2See the Standard, November, 1914, p. 95. 
110 


CHRISTIANITY 


system” was introduced. How shall the lost 
relationship be restored? How shall a fair 
return be secured to both employees and em- 
ployer for their respective parts in the process 
of production? What is a fair wage? ‘These 
are ethical questions for which the Gospels 
furnish no adequate answer because they lay 
outside the scope of teaching which Jesus 
marked out for himself in response to the one 
thing needful in his time and place. As an- 
other illustration, take the problem of the 
state in its relation to mergers and trusts— 
an economic problem indeed, yet bristling with 
moral implications and by no means solved 
despite the moral help provided in the teach- 
ings of Jesus. To what extent should the state 
act as a moral functionary in dealing with these 
combinations? Be just, be generous, be com- 
passionate, love one another, return good for 
evil—these Christian maxims, excellent and of 
imperishable worth as they are, do not help us 
here. We need to supplement them with more 
specific formulas, born out of new moral ex- 
perience in the field of the problem. 
111 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


Again, consider the need that just now is 
making itself felt more poignantly than ever, 
the need of an international morality, an ethi- 
cal code of international relations, an essential 
prerequisite for world peace. Such a code is 
not furnished by either the Old Testament or 
the New; it has yet to be worked out. Cer- 
tainly, in the ethical outlook of Jesus, inter- 
national relations had no place and for the 
excellent reason that the question had not even 
an academic interest for anybody in his day. 
Palestine was then at peace, there had been 
no war for ninety-six years; 1t was a normal 
time. ‘True, the Roman government taxed the 
Jews heavily, but they felt this would be for 
only a little while because Jesus, like his fore- 
runner John the Baptist, had taught that the 
Kingdom of Heaven was at hand and with its 
advent there would be an end of all injustice 
and oppression. It does not surprise us, there- 
fore, to find that Jesus was silent on the sub- 
ject of international morality and confined 
himself to morality between man and man, the 
paramount moral issue of his day. 

112 


CHRISTIANITY. 


The religion of the future, then, while grate- 
fully acknowledging and reverently cherish- 
ing the excellence and permanence of the gen- 
_ eral maxims of Jesus will seek to supplement 
these even as did Jesus himself supplement 
an ethical code thought to be complete and 
final by his orthodox contemporaries. For, 
moral truth, like scientific truth, is progressive. 
With the progress of civilization involving the 
rise of new conditions, new problems appear, 
and for the solution of these more light is re- 
quired than any of the historic guides has 
furnished. Hence the religion of the future 
will deem it treason to the infinite moral ideal 
to pronounce any inherited ethical code com- 
plete and final. Moreover, it will deprecate 
and condemn as altogether intellectually im- 
moral the prevailing practice, witnessed, not 
within the confines of Christianity alone, but 
in other religions besides, of doing violence to 
the clear and unmistakable meaning of gen- 
eral scriptural precepts in order to make them 
cover specific moral situations, such as have 
been cited, but for which those precepts do 
not provide a solution and were not intended 

113 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


so to do. The religion of the future, repudi- 
_ ating this pernicious practice, ethically un- 
warranted and intellectually confusing, will 
point to the Righteousness beyond the right- 
eousnesses made known to us in the scriptures; 
a Righteousness “the plenitude of whose be- 
ing has never yet been revealed, the radiance of 
whose glory has never yet been uncloaked; a 
Righteousness of whose ineffable light our 
highest visions are but feeble rays,” the Right- 
eousness that “shineth more and more unto 
the perfect day” and to be endlessly approxi- 
mated. ‘Truly do we pursue a fleeing goal. 
The ideal flies ever before us and is often 
most passionately pursued when it seems 
furthest away. The ideal grows as we climb 
to it. The climbing path never ends because 
ever and anon new summits come into view. 
So “fearfully and wonderfully” are we hu- 
mans made that we can never be permanently 
satisfied with anything short of the infinite. 
Any statical heaven, however finished and fine, 
could be at best but a temporary resting place; 
once rested and refreshed we would wish to 
resume the upward way. 
114 


CHAPTER XII 
THE BIBLE AND THE RELIGION OF THE FUTURE 


Far from ignoring or rejecting the Old and 
New Testaments (or any other sacred scrip- 
tures) the religion of the future will grate- 
fully give them a place among the sources 
of moral instruction and inspiration, select- 
ing such passages as serve to enhance the 
spiritual life. Even as the tree draws from 
the surrounding earth, water, air, the ma- 
terials wherewith to build the strength of its 
trunk and the beauty of its foliage, so the 
religion of the future will, in its formative 
process, draw upon the Old and New Testa- 
ments and upon all other historic written re- 
sources to give its gospel strength, beauty, 
inspiration. 

But in addition to its reliance on these for 
the conduct of life, the religion of the future 
will have to depend on new moral experience 

115 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


to furnish the needed light on problems for 
which the ancient “revelations” did not pro- 
vide. Many and varied are the moral issues 
that were unknown to the founders of the 
great religions, issues that have arisen as a 

result of new conditions in modern life. For | 
instance, the right relation of employer and 
employee in big industry, an issue only a cen- 
tury and a half old, dating from “the indus- 
trial revolution’’; the moral functioning of the 
state in the matter of “mergers’’—an issue no 
older than the middle of the last century; the 
securing of international peace, an issue 
which, on its present world-inclusive scale, did 
not exist for the ethical writers of antiquity 
and for ‘which, in consequence, no adequate 
aid has been supplied. And precisely as it 
was out of moral experience—experience in 
the field of moral relations—that the insight 
was reached (which eventually took on the 
character of “divine revelation’) so too out 
of new moral experience under new conditions 
must the new insight be forthcoming. Both 
Catholic and Protestant Christians agree in 

116 


THE BIBLE 


believing that the “revelation” recorded in the 
New Testament suffices to meet the moral 
needs of man for all time—a “complete and 


? 


final revelation,” one to which humanity can 
ever turn for guidance, one that stands in 
no need of supplementation because interpret- 
able to meet every need in every age. But 
I venture to affirm that the religion of the 
future will look askance at the liberties 
that have been taken with the text of “revela- 
tion” to make it teach what modern ethical 
thinking has worked out. The coming religion 
will, I take it, frankly construe every text as 
it was intended to be understood by the writer 
and not twist or turn it into a significance it 
cannot lawfully bear. In other words, the 
religion of the future, while making the ut- 
most possible of the moral formulas of the 
past, will bravely endeavor to supply new 
formulas to meet the moral issues for which 
the older ones do not suffice. Moral problems 
there are, touching the right relation of par- 
ents and children, of men and women in mar- 
riage, of the citizen and the state, of the 
117 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


individual nation to the family of nations— 
problems on which there is as yet no consensus 
of opinion as to where the right lies, problems 
with which the New Testament did not deal 
and for the excellent reasons already cited. 
How shall these and kindred problems be 
solved? How shall it be determined what the 
right relations are in each case? The religion 
of the future, while doing full justice to the 
New ‘Testament revelation, will rely, for ad- 
ditional moral knowledge adequate to solving 
the problems, on moral experience in the sey- 
eral fields where the problems exist. 

In the Cathedral Museum at Florence I 
read the specifications prepared by Bru- 
nelleschi for the completing of the great dome. 
The celebrated architect closed the series of 
instructions for those who would follow him 
with these significant words, “La pratica 
insegna che si has da seguire’—‘practice 
teaches what the next step to be taken shall 
be.” When the dome was about to be closed 
in at the height of fifty-seven feet the master 
builders then in charge of the work should 

118 


THE BIBLE 


determine how to complete it; their experi- 
ence, according to Brunelleschi, was to be the 
teacher when the final stage of the great archi- 
tectural task would be reached. So in con- 
structing the dome for the cathedral of the 
moral life, the religion of the future will make 
moral experience the teacher, practice in moral 
architecture will determine the content of the 
new formulas for new conditions and so sup- 
plement the imperishable teaching transmitted 
from the past. It is in this sense that practice 
precedes theory. “If ye but do the will ye 
shall know the doctrine.” By striving to get 
into right relations with others—in the home, 
in the factory, in the state—we acquire the 
moral experience that will culminate in learn- 
ing what those relations owght to be. By liv- 
ing the life of love we arrive at the spiritual 
meaning of love. By working toward an ideal 
of international justice, we learn at last what 
the ideal actually is. By experiencing the 
deeper content of the moral life we approxi- 
mate adequate statement of the moral ideal. 
Thus the religion of the future will be dis- 
119 


COMPARATIVE RELIGION 


tinguished from Christianity and the other 
historic faiths by this reliance on moral ex- 
perience to supplement the permanent helpful 
elements in the “revelations” of the past; by 
the spontaneous abdication of the principle of 
authority in favor of free reason and moral 
experience as joint sovereigns of the ethical 
realm and as the true fountain sources of the 
“fuller light” that yet needs to be shed on the 
path of the moral life. Nay more, the religion 
of the future by allying itself with the scien- 
tific method of truth-seeking will be ade- 
quately protected against the danger of dog- 
matism and of self-commitment to “absolute 
finalities.” That alliance will serve to keep 
it ever free for self-readjustment to the discov- 
ery of new facts, or of new light on old facts, 
remembering that infallibility is not for fallible 
man and that ever closer approximation to the 
unattainable ideal is his highest possible 
attainment. 


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